Born in Fiendfyre, Year 1: Stone Faced
by samhaine
Summary: Newly escaped from a deranged mentor and under the Doom of Damocles, teen Harry Dresden finds himself sent to Hogwarts where a believed-deceased Dark Lord begins his plans to return to the Wizarding world.
1. Guest of the State

_Obligatory disclaimer: All the characters, world building, and story beats here that don't belong to JK Rowling belong to Jim Butcher (or their associated media empires)._

* * *

The nightmare began to repeat again. I'd lost track of how many times it had played already. I was bound in a ritual circle, the first girl I'd ever loved barely looking at me as she painted runes on my skin. Not far away but out of the circle, my mentor, a man I didn't exactly like but had thought I could trust, was preparing for whatever they were about to do to me.

In the memory, or whatever this nightmare was, the walls of our rented house in the London suburbs faded away into smoke and darkness. All I could focus on was whatever they were trying to do to me, and the rest of the world was darkness. All I could feel was cold. As the old man who'd rescued me from the orphanage and taught me magic began to chant, something began to pull away from the background. Made of the same black smoke, it gradually took on the vague form of a person.

"I have prepared the vessel as promised. Claim him!" Justin shouted, as the wraith began to move toward me and the runes blazed. Pain seared through me, and the walls of my mind started to crumble. I shouted for Elaine to help, but she had retreated to the back of the room, her glassy stare on the floor. The creature reached out its arm and touched me, causing me torment I'd never felt before. It was up to me. Bound and without a focus, the trick my godmother had taught me was extremely risky, but not as risky as whatever this specter wanted to do to me.

With a painful twist and a thunderous clap I was across the room, hands free and grabbing for my blasting rod, discarded by Justin in the corner by my clothes. My blood was now freely mixing into the runes, random strips of flesh splinched off and drifting to the floor back in the circle along with the ropes that held me. It hurt, but not as much as Justin and Elaine immediately trying to react. To bind me back into the circle for this creature.

I dove behind the couch that had been shoved away to turn the sitting room into a ritual space. In the nightmare, pieces of the room were materializing from the shadows as they became relevant. I hit the floor hard, dust burning into my wounds but narrowly dodging the red light of stunners flying toward me. I didn't know how I was going to fight both of them and this spirit. I'd never even beaten Justin dueling by himself.

My only hope, I thought, was to try to apparate again, even though going ten feet hadn't worked out so well, and my blasting rod wouldn't help. Out of the house and I'd have a chance. But then the wraith floated above the couch, soaking up all thought and light in the room as it sought to finish whatever it had started. The very wrongness of it woke a powerful anger in me, and I could only think back to the _other _spell my godmother had so recently taught me, which the rod was basically _designed_ for.

"Incendio! Pyroincendio!" I screamed, and willed my fear and betrayal into the charm, transforming it into a powerful curse. The purple jet of flame barely shed any light, reserving all of its power for scorching heat. When it had happened, it was the hottest thing I'd ever felt, but in this nightmare-memory it barely registered against the cold. I caught the wraith with the blast, and it flung itself away with a shriek, fleeing the room with a hole torn in its nebulous form. I tried to end the spell, but it had taken on a life of its own, flame still shooting from my focus, even when I dropped the blasting rod. I had no idea where it was still getting its power, but the borders of the room were going from nebulous void to intense, colorful flames.

As I peeked over the couch, I was shocked by what the flames had become. Coalesced into a beast of near-ultraviolet fire, it had already torn into Justin. I didn't even know if he'd had long enough to realize what was happening. His smoking corpse had fallen not far from where he'd attacked me. I couldn't see Elaine through the smoke and flame. I was about to charge into the burning house looking for her when something changed.

The burning house slowly faded into a stone cell, and the numbing cold became simply the clammy chill of a damp prison room. As I came out of my fugue, or dream, or whatever it was, I thought I saw the wraith that attacked me retreat down the hall as a big-eared cat made of silver light stalked past the door. As the lambent glow hit me, I was beginning to come out of whatever terrible fugue I'd been in.

"Did you even interrogate the boy before you brought him here?" a deep voice asked.

A raspier voice answered, "Interrogations always go easier after they know what they're in for." I couldn't see the speaker, but I was sure he was smirking. "Besides, he's an auror-killer. Trial's just a formality at this point."

"A formality we must uphold," answered the first voice, who I could now see was a dark-skinned man in robes styled to look like some kind of African formal costume. He gestured at the door while keeping his wand pointed down the hall controlling the silver lynx. _Patronus_ my memory finally supplied: the spell used to ward off creatures of darkness. I wonder if that would have been a better choice for me than fiendfyre.

The other man slouched over and grudgingly unlocked the cell door with his wand. Between the ratty tan trenchcoat and the graying blonde hair, he looked like a guy that had read a Hellblazer comic and decided that was exactly the vibe he wanted to put out. Hell, he looked old enough that maybe Constantine's dress code was based on this guy by an incompletely memory-wiped comic artist. "C'mon, punk. Time for your interview."

I thought about being petulant and making them drag me out, but I needed the time away from whatever nightmare-inducing creature that was, and could barely put together a coherent thought of resistance. When we came to London, Justin had warned me the British prison system was harsh, but this just seemed wrong. I grudgingly levered myself standing, and had a bit of schadenfreude as the men did a double-take when they realized I towered over them. I'm not exactly physically overwhelming, especially given how I'm thin enough to read as all elbows and knees, but the only guys taller than me tend to have a giant in their family trees.

As I followed them out the narrow corridor, the rows of cells lit only by the light from the patronus, I couldn't see anyone else in the nearby cells, but I could hear screams of anguish and terror somewhere below me. We finally left through another gate at the end of the hall where some candles were burning. As the gate was closed on the room, I saw that the sign above said, "Wing 1: Minimum Security."

The wannabe-Constantine caught my glance and smirked, "That's right. You only got a _taste_. Once the Wizengamot nails you for killing Du Morne, you're going down into maximum security with the Death Eaters." Of the three proper nouns in that sentence, the only one I recognized was Du Morne.

It was Justin's last name, and meant I was probably screwed.

* * *

_Author's Note: Year 1 is complete, and subsequent years are available from my profile._


	2. Good Cop, Bad Cop

"My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Conjure by it at your own risk."

Admittedly, when I practiced that in the mirror I was full of confidence and staring down an imagined bad guy, not still out of it in a candle-lit interrogation room in some drafty old castle and sitting across an antique table from a couple of aurors. The trenchcoat-wearing hardass seemed amused rather than intimidated. The black guy actually blinked for a second and tilted his head, like he'd heard my name before.

"Why'd I want to conjure by your name? One of you is too many as it is," my interrogator quipped as he slouched deeper into his coat.

"He's obviously too deep into dementor-exposure to be coherent, Dawlish," the other one explained, then got up to head out of the room. "I'll be right back."

Clearly pleased that his partner had left the room, Dawlish took the opportunity for another pass at breaking me. "You're a cop-killer, Dresden. Du Morne taught me. Taught a lot of the aurors at the academy. Lot of aurors ready to see some payback for burning the man alive. American out of your depth in London? Hoped to find something in the house to steal?"

I tried to chuckle sardonically, but whatever those cells had done to me turned it into a cough. I managed to get out, "Was shield practice for you baseballs? Or are those just easier to come by in the states?"

That hit home and Dawlish shrugged, "Bludgers." Justin had apparently been a violent teacher with his earlier apprentices too. He insisted that any idiot could make a shield that would stop a spell, but most wizards never learned to protect against bullets or other flung missiles. The aging auror was looking at me differently, now. "You claiming you were his apprentice?"

"Something like that," I shrugged. I was going to elaborate, but the gesture made me wince. I looked down at my arm, pulling up the prison jumpsuit they'd given me. My splinching wounds were scabbed over, but far from healed. At least I hadn't bled to death.

"Only the highest-quality dittany salve for the minister's special guests," Dawlish sad, the sarcasm dripping. "That's how we found you, you know? Barely took a tracking spell to follow the amount of blood you were losing. How'd you splinch yourself anyway?"

I winced. Hopefully they hadn't followed my _whole _trip after leaving the burning house behind. I'd stashed some rescued items I hoped to retrieve if I got out of this. I didn't exactly get the impression he'd believe me, but no reason not to share. "Apparating out of the ritual circle I was stuck in."

The other auror had walked back in on that, bringing a half-eaten candy bar that he handed to me as he sat back down. "Eat that," he suggested, "it will help."

While I was suspicious, I also suddenly realized I was starving. How long had I been here? The chocolate wasn't exactly a meal, but I _did _feel a lot better as soon as I started eating it. A gray fog I'd been feeling around my senses and emotions started to dissipate.

"You get that last bit, Shacklebolt?" his partner asked.

Shacklebolt nodded, "A shame the fiendfyre destroyed any proof one way or the other. But let's play this out. Start at the beginning, please, Mr. Dresden."

If it had just been that guy, I might have. But I was alone in a foreign country, my mentor had tried to use me as a sacrifice in some dark arts ritual, my girlfriend had helped, and Dawlish was at best as misguided as I'd been. At worst, he knew my former mentor was dark and was trying to cover it up. The chocolate had at least cleared my head enough to start asking the real questions. "I'd love to, but do I get a lawyer or a phone call in this country?" Not that I had anyone to call...

Dawlish looked over at Shacklebolt and asked, "Why do the American mudbloods always ask for a phone?"

The black auror didn't particularly seem to like the insult, which Justin had warned me was a slur about blood purity that many British wizards used. "It's a cliche in muggle films," he allowed, then turned to me to explain, "We must inform your barrister if you have one on retainer. And you will have additional opportunities to contact one before a trial. But, as Auror Dawlish has made clear, we can hold you for quite some time when you are the primary suspect in a murder investigation before bringing it to trial. If you have a compelling story, it's often a good idea to just tell us what happened. We may be able to use your testimony to identify a better suspect. Right now, you're our only known witness to what happened last night."

I hadn't found Elaine in the house. She'd tied me up and helped with the ritual. She'd betrayed me even more fully than Justin, because I thought she loved me. It would be so easy to just blame her for everything. See if they could find her. But, for all I knew she was dead. Even if she was, I couldn't bring myself to claim she was the mastermind and Justin was a victim. I still felt I owed her that, for some reason. So I started talking, figuring out how much I was going to say as I went…

"Not that it matters, but I'm not a mudblood," I began, fixing my gaze on Dawlish. "My mother was magical and probably British. I _thought _we had moved to London to try to learn more about her. She died when I was born. My father died when I was little. Justin found me in an orphanage before I turned 11. Told me I was a wizard."

Something about the age captured Shacklebolt's attention. "An American, muggle orphanage?" I nodded and he asked, "Why there? And how did Du Morne find you?"

"Dad traveled for work. He was a muggle magician. They do tricks for entertainment. I'm not sure where he met mom. I don't know how Justin found me. He led me to believe that it was normal for wizards to find kids strong in magic and take them on as apprentices. Is that wrong?"

"This is such bollocks," Dawlish insisted, interrupting his partner trying to answer. "Justin Du Morne was a decorated auror and academy instructor who retired after the war with nearly half a century of service. Why would he be trawling MACUSA territory for apprentices?"

Shacklebolt thought for a moment then asked me, "When and how did you get into Britain, Mr. Dresden?"

It was easy enough to dredge up the date, since I'd made a joke about bewaring the Ides of March when we came over. "March 15th this year. International portkey from Chicago to London. Some of our furniture and clothes got shipped the muggle way to the house."

"And we'll find that you and Du Morne traveled together?" Me, Justin, and Elaine, but I didn't need to volunteer that. As I nodded again, Shacklebolt continued, "Then we'll confirm the passports and travel with the Ministry tomorrow. But, for now, can we take for granted that, whatever the reason, Mr. Dresden _was _Du Morne's apprentice?" Now it was Dawlish's turn to nod, grudgingly. "Please continue, Mr. Dresden."

While I was vaguely aware that I was experiencing the good cop/bad cop gambit, it was a classic for a reason, because it worked. "He trained me for a few years. Like I said, we were here as far as I knew to look for information about my mother. We talked about it over Christmas. It was going to be my present. We came over in March, and didn't make any progress for months. I don't know anymore if we were actually here looking for my mother."

"Did you have contact with Du Morne in the last five years or so?" Shacklebolt asked his partner. Dawlish just shook his head, clearly annoyed that my story was holding up so far. "Why don't you think you were looking for your mother?"

I didn't think they wanted to hear that my mad godmother had warned me, and I'd still walked back into the trap like an idiot. Instead, I just offered the far more lame, "He got distant. He'd go talk to people that he didn't want me to meet and wouldn't have any answers. Just said he was working on it. Felt like he was working on something else."

Shacklebolt took that opening, looked at me, raised an eyebrow at Dawlish, and then asked, "Did he ever mention Gringotts?"

Before I could even answer, Dawlish actually sat up from his slouch, now annoyed at his partner. "No! We are not entertaining the idea that my friend and teacher was involved in that. Especially because he was getting murdered by this punk on the same night!"

"By Mr. Dresden… or by co-conspirators who had a falling out after a botched robbery and wanted to hide the evidence?"

"Screw you, Shack! Don't ruin my case in front of the suspect!" Dawlish actually stood up to try to get a height advantage over his partner, his rickety old wooden chair toppling over in his haste. "You can make up all the conspiracy stories you want and sell them to the Quibbler, but I have a dead, decorated auror and an American half-blood with no alibi leaving a blood trail right to his door!"

The black auror didn't lose his cool, just leaned back a bit so he could keep me and Dawlish both in view. "And I have an unprecedented heist on the same night as a violent confrontation using dark magic, only thirty miles away. You know I don't believe in coincidences, John. If your teacher was involved, Mr. Dresden is now our best lead, no matter how much you want to throw him to the dementors because a friend of yours is dead."

I was suddenly wishing I hadn't mentioned the ritual circle. At this point, they were ready to assume Justin had been involved in some kind of conspiracy that got him killed. Maybe he had. From what my godmother had told me and what he'd tried, very little would surprise me. I _did _suddenly remember something from my potions lessons, so before they went after each other again I interjected, "Can't you just put me on veritaserum?"

Shacklebolt gestured at me as if he'd scored a point. Probably guilty people didn't ask to take truth serum. Dawlish grimaced, and asked, "How old are you?"

"I'll be 16 in October," I admitted.

He shook his head, a bit of perverse glee slipping back in. "We can only use it on minors in extreme circumstances. Bad for your magic. We'll have to use other interrogation techniques."

His partner countered, "If it gets him out of Azkaban for murdering an auror, that may be an extreme enough circumstance. And if he's willing to take veritaserum, he's probably willing to submit to mind reading…"

Dawlish shot back, "Even if we had a legilimens here, he'd need a guardian's permission. Since he admits that he's an orphan, and his mentor was just murdered, we don't even know who that is."

Suddenly, from outside the room, there was a sound like a barrel of gasoline igniting and a pressure wave of warm air that shook the decrepit old door and made the candles in the room flicker. Shacklebolt grinned, "Perfect timing. I have a solution to both problems…"


	3. On Wings of Flame

Shacklebolt got up to invite in his guest while Dawlish's face went all squinty, as if he suddenly realized he'd been outplayed. I don't know what I was expecting, but what I _got _was Gandalf, if he'd entered our world through Elton John's closet. I wasn't sure if the powder blue robes stitched with golden and silver stars were his pajamas, since they looked rumpled as if he'd slept in them or put them on quickly to get here in the middle of the night. They were an interesting contrast to the bright red and orange hawk-sized bird sitting on his shoulder.

Shacklebolt gestured to his own recently vacated chair and said, "Chief Warlock, it's a pleasure to see you this evening. We're hoping you can solve an issue. Mr. Dresden here is a suspect in a murder, too young for veritaserum, and it's unclear who his magical guardian is to allow for other methods of interrogation."

The white-bearded old wizard made a negating gesture with his hand about taking Shacklebolt's chair and effortlessly conjured a much nicer, plush chair at the end of the table with a wave of his wand. I noticed that wand was decorated and carved in a way that would be extremely difficult from everything I knew about focus crafting, and looked ancient. The old man quirked an eyebrow as he noticed me examining his wand rather than his conjuration, and quickly hid the wand back up his sleeve in one smooth motion while he was sitting down.

As Shacklebolt reclaimed his seat between his guest and Dawlish, the chief warlock recited, "Mr. H. Dresden. The East Bunk Room. Mercy Home, Chicago, Illinois. I forget the exact street address." He admitted, "It was with great dismay that we did not receive a response to your Hogwarts acceptance letter several years ago, and even greater dismay when we learned that you had been adopted from the home and moved immediately before receiving it. Despite serious efforts to locate you, we could not determine where you'd moved. It's much harder for the locating charms to work in America, of course, but I always suspected something else was at work."

Dawlish wasn't buying it. "Why would an American half-blood get a Hogwarts letter?"

I hated to agree with the Constantine-wannabe, but I added, "Isn't that the dueling school for English purebloods?"

"It's far more than that, Mr. Dresden. And, through your mother's line, you're a legacy student at the top of the list for admittance." As if to head off questions about my mother, he added, "But where are my manners? I'm Albus Dumbledore, and I'm headmaster of Hogwarts, in addition to the Chief Warlock title that Kingsley mentioned." He glanced at Dawlish, "Since you never technically declined your letter due to extenuating circumstances, and you have no other clearly identified magical guardian, I think I can act _in loco parentis_ for you sufficiently to approve other methods of interrogation, as Kingsley suggested."

He succeeded in derailing my questions as my admittedly weak command of Latin finally turned up a possible translation of the word Dawlish had used earlier. "Mind collecting?"

Dumbledore sat back in a way that let the candlelight glimmer off his glasses and make his eyes seem to twinkle in approval. "Close, Mr. Dresden. The traditional translation of legilimency is 'mind _reading_' but there's definitely an element of collecting a subject's thoughts involved. In most cases it is an entirely painless process, where I view your memories in order to establish what happened." He shot a disapproving look at Dawlish. "It is generally a preferred option of establishing innocence to being thrown in with the dementors."

He made a good point. I didn't trust the old man or his too-convenient arrival. I definitely didn't want him digging around my head. But if it was that or going back in a cell… "Do it."

Dawlish still looked like he was trying to come up with a legal objection when Dumbledore told me, "Please bring your memories of the night in question to the front of your mind and look me in the eyes. _Legilimens!_"

Once again the nightmare of the previous evening raced through my head. But it was less like I was stuck experiencing it again and more like I was visualizing it to explain it to someone else. And there were weird tangents. Looking at Justin brought forth short digressions about how I'd met him and my last few years of training. Looking at Elaine started me thinking about her, but it was far too painful and I resisted. Dumbledore probably could have kept going despite my efforts, but I felt him pull back and return to the memory.

When we reached the part where the wraith appeared, I felt a surge of surprise and worry that I didn't think was coming from me. All the memories I had of anything similar, from horror movies to the dementor I'd seen earlier flitted through my mind's eye, and didn't find a match. He let the rest of the memory play out quickly, ending, thankfully, as I raced into the house looking for Elaine.

While I blinked and tried to get my brain back in order after that experience, Dumbledore leaned back in his cushioned chair and steepled his fingers, deep in thought. Dawlish clearly didn't want to give him too much time to think, and asked, "Well?"

With a sigh of annoyance at the interruption, Dumbledore allowed, "Mr. Dresden is not a murderer, John. I know Justin was well-respected amongst many of the aurors that he trained, but I suggest you set aside that preconception and do some digging into his activities of the last few years."

"Was he involved in the other incident last night?" Shacklebolt asked.

"Not that Mr. Dresden could prove, but I suspect if Justin was not involved, he knew people that were…" Dumbledore sighed, "Pulling at that thread may at least turn up some new leads for your investigation."

"If Dresden didn't kill Du Morne, who did?" Dawlish insisted.

"I'm afraid that Justin was engaged in dangerous rituals that led inevitably to his death. While I have some suspicions as to what he hoped to achieve, Mr. Dresden did not know enough about what he saw to provide certainty. I will need to research before I'm comfortable saying more than that."

I was shocked that Dumbledore wasn't revealing that I summoned the fiendfyre that killed Justin and burned down the house. I was hoping for him pointing out it was self defense, but shocked that he was trying to make it sound like I was completely innocent. What was this old man's game? Dawlish apparently agreed, and nearly yelled, "Not good enough, you old meddler! I'm sick of you coming in here and wandering off with clues and suspects. When's the last time you actually _helped _with an investigation? I can think of half a dozen cases off the top of my head that are still open because you know what's going on but won't tell us." Dumbledore didn't appear to be interested in responding, so Dawlish continued, "Fuck it. I'm invoking the Damocles statute."

Shacklebolt gasped, "John, nobody's called for the Doom of Damocles since Grindelwald's war."

"But it's my prerogative, right?" Dawlish insisted. "Suspect that can't be conclusively exonerated of high crimes, but can't be convicted either. You can't tell me it doesn't fit. I'm invoking it. Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, you are hereby notified that, pursuant to the Damocles statute of the High Crimes Act of 1645, until you are proven innocent of the death of Justin Du Morne, you are under the Doom."

Dumbledore and Shacklebolt looked pissed but weren't elaborating, so I asked, "What does that mean?"

"You mentioned American baseball, right?" Dawlish elaborated with quiet glee. "You've got one strike left. Keep your nose clean, punk.

"The next time you slip up, you're mine."


	4. The Morning After

I woke up in a much better situation than the last time I'd come to. It took me a minute to remember why I was in a small castle hospital that would have looked obsolete by 1900. I guessed cleaning magic could account for a lot of problems, but if this was a muggle hospital people would be getting infections constantly. The view was nice, at least, sunlight reflecting off the large lake below indicating that I'd been out for most of the morning, and at it least smelled clean, if not antiseptic.

Dumbledore had calmly put off most of my questions the night before, other than affirming, "Wait, is that a phoenix!?" when the bird in question burst into flame and apparated us from the prison to wherever I was now. I assumed Hogwarts, but so far I'd only seen this hospital room. An elderly matron who seemed to regard herself queen of this domain had briefly conferred with the headmaster, showed me a bed, and made me drink a potion. By the taste and effects, I was guessing a dreamless sleep draught.

"Well good morning, Mr. Dresden," the lady in question called, moving about the room in a manner that the verb bustling had been coined to describe. She'd been across the room, bottles and boxes piled on several chairs outside a large closet, likely in the middle of summer inventory. She wandered over to me and started doing diagnostic spells with her wand while I looked on in bemusement at the school nurse stereotype come to life. "You seem to be recovering, though I insist you take it easy for a few days. I'm afraid to say that you'll likely retain some faint scarring from your improperly treated splinching wounds, but it looks like you've already bounced back from the dementor exposure. How do you feel?"

I checked my forearms and agreed that it was a significant improvement, with the angry scabs I'd had replaced with fading lines. Justin had never been interested in healing charms, not to mention some early problems at the orphanage, so they wouldn't be my first scars. I no longer felt the haze of depression and fear that lingered throughout the prison, so I guessed whatever those creatures had done to me was passing, as well. "Much better, thank you ma'am."

"Excellent. I'll inform the headmaster that you're up and around. Please stay in bed until someone comes to collect you." With that, she went back to what she was doing and left me to reflect on the chaos of the last few days while looking out over the lake.

I was now wearing a cotton hospital gown instead of prison robes, though I could faintly feel magic running through them as if they'd been transfigured from what I was wearing when I walked in. Curious and with nothing better to do, I gathered my magic for a few minutes and then muttered, "_Finite_." The surge of cancellation snapped through my clothing and in a moment I was back in the t-shirt and shorts I'd managed to salvage from the fire and collected before leaving the prison. The transfiguration had at least worked out most of the smoke smell, but the shirt was still emblazoned with a now-completely-inappropriate logo for Baderbräu. Well, maybe not completely: Dumbledore had been amused that the beer's logo looked like a phoenix.

Of course, I was never that precise without a focus, and the counter-spell also caught the bed I was laying in. I noticed too late that the rest of the beds in the ward would only be roomy for small children as my legs were suddenly sticking off the end of the cot. I grumbled and pulled them Indian-style so I could barely fit on the bed that had clearly been lengthened to fit me.

"Five points to… well, we don't know what house you are yet," said the woman that had just walked in. Or, that was what I thought she'd said, through her thick Scottish accent. I glanced over and was impressed. This lady could rule the Chicago goth scene by just walking into a club. Given how long witches and wizards lived, the combination of barely-graying dark hair and fine wrinkles could put her at anywhere from 50 to 100. Severely dressed in all black with a witch's hat, perhaps her lack of wrinkles was due to never smiling. Though I thought I spotted a number of emotions flickering around her eyes as she looked at me.

"Five points?" I asked, confused.

"Our scoring system for student achievements," she explained. "Once one gets into the habit, it becomes a reflex. That's the first wandless counter-spell I've seen from a student in some time."

I shrugged, "I was never very good with a wand as a focus. I'm much better with the right tool than a Swiss Army knife. Since you can't always get the right focus, I learned to do most charms without one if I need to."

Her mouth puckered a bit, and I wasn't sure if she was upset or impressed. "Well, that may make it harder to teach you, here. We haven't taught anything but wand magic for decades. I wasn't sure there were any serious practitioners of other styles still in the Western world. This certainly makes your placement tests much more important."

I felt like I needed to throw the brakes on this whole educational train before it got too much momentum. "Ma'am, I really appreciate the headmaster sticking his neck out for me to keep me from being railroaded by the aurors. But I'd barely _heard _of Hogwarts before last night, and I certainly can't pay for a fancy Scottish boarding school for purebloods. I was honestly hoping that the US embassy would ship me back home to Chicago so I could get a job and try to pick up my GED."

She cocked her head like a confused animal, then admitted, "I'm not exactly sure what a GED is, Mr. Dresden, but there are difficulties with your plan. Mainly, that it won't be permitted for you to leave the country until we can convince the Ministry to lift the Doom of Damocles. While using muggle means might succeed, the aurors _do _keep an eye on flight and ship manifests, so it's far from guaranteed. However, I can assure you that this is not simply a school for the pureblooded elite, no matter how much they'd like others to think so. We have many students here on scholarship, including quite a few muggleborn. The headmaster has assured me that arranging your tuition will be a priority, as long as you're willing to put in the work."

I made a guess. "My mother went here?"

A flicker of pain, quickly concealed. None of the adults here seemed to want to be completely honest with me. "She did. Several of her own ancestors did so as well. Margaret was… a willful girl, and left here early and not on the best of terms. Like her son, she was eager to make her own way, perhaps to her own detriment. I simply ask that you give me an opportunity to prove to you that it's worth your time. Her life might have gone much differently, had she stayed at Hogwarts."

I wasn't even trying to be horrible, it just slipped out. "She wouldn't have married a muggle, died in childbirth, and lost her son in the American orphanage system, you mean?" I apparently wasn't ready to hear my mother, who my father had always told me was the most wonderful woman in the world, described as basically a delinquent high school dropout.

The woman's face went even more still than before, as if it was taking all of her skill at being a taciturn school marm from reacting. But I thought I saw a glimmer of tears in the corner of her eyes. Finally, after a long moment, she answered, "Something like that. Will you come with me to my office so we can discuss your placement exams, Mr. Dresden?"

As I followed her out, I caught a look of concern from the school nurse at the both of us, and a whispered, "Oh, Minerva…"


	5. Wearing Hats

Everyone in the British wizarding world seemed to expect you to know who they were or figure it out from context, so I'd finally identified Minerva McGonagall from the nameplate on her office door. This also informed me that she was the transfiguration professor and the assistant headmistress. The inside of the office was as severe as the rest of her demeanor. Basically a stone closet with a large fireplace and window overlooking the castle grounds, there was not much here other than a small, uncluttered desk, a couple of chairs, and a large, orderly bookshelf. The one thing that stood out was a battered old hat lying on the desk, barely still pointy in the wizarding style. "Recent upgrade?" I asked, gesturing at the much newer witch hat she was wearing.

"Oh, no, that's for you, Mr. Dresden."

Looked like the whole scholarship student thing was about to be brought home. "I don't really wear hats," I demurred.

Her cheek twitched as she sat down and gestured for me to take the chair across the desk. That might have been the closest thing to a smile that would crack through her facade. "You only have to wear it for a minute. I mentioned houses to you before? The students of Hogwarts are sorted based on temperament into one of four groups. The magic of that hat gauges which would suit you best. Normally, this is done on the first day of school in front of all your peers… but I assumed you would prefer not to sit on a stool in between a pair of 11-year-olds at the welcoming feast next month?"

"I don't know, maybe that would set peoples' expectations of me at the right level." I was still upset about the whole situation, but I felt bad for almost making the stone-faced witch cry earlier and was willing to meet her halfway if she was back in a joking mood. "I just put it on?"

She nodded, so I put the decrepit old hat on my head, and thought I felt it wriggle on its own to settle itself. A sensation similar to what Dumbledore had done to me the night before crept over my mind. But where he was looking at my memories almost like a real-time film reel, whatever the hat was doing seemed far faster and more thorough. I couldn't figure out why they used such a powerful artifact for arbitrarily dividing children into peer groups when the auror corps had to send away for their chief warlock to do a fraction of the same work.

After only a moment, I heard a gravelly voice speaking in my mind. "As usual, when I have to do a late sorting, I find something to recommend you to any of the houses. This may be difficult."

"Make your best attempt, hat," I thought at it. "I don't know anything about it."

"Then let me give you a brief overview. Slytherin is the house for the ambitious and cunning, and you're clever enough to make your way there. I fear, however, you might find it hard to belong with the current attitudes of the house.

"Ravenclaw keeps the seekers of knowledge for knowledge's sake, and you have a questing mind and deep interest in magical theory. Yet, I do not think you'd have the patience to solve a riddle every time you wanted to enter your common room.

"Hufflepuff is the home of the loyal, and would go out of their way to welcome you. Many orphans find their way there. But you are unlikely to be content as just one small part of a larger team.

"Gryffindor is the house of the brave, and you certainly have that quality to an almost foolhardy degree. Indeed, I see that you're exactly the type to make a bad quip and take another hit than to ever bend before evil. I almost hate to put you in with others that will only encourage this habit but…

"Better be Gryffindor!" that last seemed to leave my head and be announced to the room, removing the option for me to tell McGonagall that it had said Hufflepuff where I could keep my head down.

Was that pride in the professor's eyes as she gestured for me to put the hat back on the desk? Once it was back in place and I'd run my fingers over a scalp that definitely needed a shower but at least wouldn't have hat hair, she explained, "In addition to my other duties, I serve as head of house for Gryffindor. I am to be your first point of contact for school issues."

"Do they even let you sleep?" I asked, considering how many hats _she _must wear on a daily basis.

"Strictly on the weekends and school holidays, Mr. Dresden." I was getting it. Bad jokes were my shield against the world, and a stoic mien was hers. But Professor McGonagall was probably a fun person to be around, if you could stay on her good side and get her to relax a bit. She passed a piece of paper to me. Wait, no, it was legitimately a sheet of parchment. PETA would have a field day with this place, if they realized the wizarding world was still on the sheepskin standard. "That's the Hogwarts course list. I'd like you to let me know the generalities of your education in each of those disciplines, so we can prepare the other professors for your placement exams."

A couple of things immediately jumped out to me as weird. "Arithmancy covers spell creation and modification? How much math is actually taught? And do you have any social studies other than history? Wait, is there really no English class? No Latin? Music? PE? Science!?"

McGonagall let out a long-suffering sigh, then explained, "That was almost verbatim the questions a pair of dentists recently asked me when reviewing the curriculum for their daughter. I assume you were taking muggle schooling with your mentor teaching you magic?"

"More or less," I admitted. "I did a lot of home schooling, particularly after we moved here earlier in the year. That's why I wasn't too worried about getting my GED. Sorry, General... Equivalency Diploma. I think that's what it stands for. It's what you can get in the US so you can go to college if you didn't finish high school."

She nodded. "That type of education is typical for most magical students elsewhere in Britain, as well. The majority of witches and wizards are apprenticed in a similar manner as you were, taking their magical education from their parents or from a mentor in the trade they hope to pursue. Still others attend schools arranged for the purpose in various cities around the country. I believe one in central London even has more students than Hogwarts, which only takes up to 40 students per year group. Those schools also cover more muggle subjects. Any such students are allowed to take the two large tests of magical aptitude: the OWLs and NEWTs.

"It is extremely uncommon for anyone from an apprenticeship or smaller school to do well enough on these tests to qualify for a position in the Ministry. A fair number qualify as aurors and healers, due to some academies specifically created to ensure specialized training for those jobs. But the vast majority are partially-trained in magic and must content themselves in trades. They'll never qualify for work in the magical government…"

I thought I followed her. "So they'll never get a chance to change the laws making them second-class citizens. Meanwhile, Hogwarts teaches specifically to those tests?"

"I was a bit more politic with the parents of an 11-year-old, but, essentially, yes. But you have it backwards: the test is actually based on the Hogwarts curriculum, as the oldest magic school in the country. Unfortunately, at this point it's a self-reinforcing cycle. We set the standards, but are now trapped by them. And they haven't changed meaningfully in centuries. I would love to offer a larger range of classes, but the more we add to the curriculum, the less time the students have to prepare for what's on the tests…"

Suddenly, a lot of Justin's behaviors hit me, and I concluded, "Most of the government, who controls these standards, entered from Hogwarts. And none of their coworkers are likely to call them on what they don't know. Meanwhile, their bosses were born in the 1800s anyway, because wizards live so long, and haven't kept up with the last century of technology. So they can't go out into the rest of the world without being completely confused and scared by what they see there."

She just sighed, and nodded. "That is, in fact, quite a succinct description of the recent conflicts in British wizarding society. If you have the time around your other classes, we are quite happy to help you take correspondence courses to maintain the other disciplines you feel are lacking."

"Still, though," I couldn't stop arguing, "no literature or Latin courses? British schools have been mad for those for centuries."

"Hogwarts was founded so long ago that there was significantly less English literary tradition. And the classes were originally _taught _in Latin. As the language died slowly, nobody ever realized it now needed to be its own class to understand spell phrases. Professor Vector has to do a significant remedial Latin module for starting Arithmancy students before they can begin to understand the spells they're creating."

I felt like I was already getting good at reading this woman, despite her dislike of making facial expressions, and the feeling I was getting mirrored the deep frustration of several other teachers I'd met that felt hamstrung by government standards. "I'll just… go over this list then?"

Her response was extremely dry. "That would be excellent. Thank you, Mr. Dresden."


	6. Forest for the Trees

The next couple of days were a strange dance of getting me situated. Despite McGonagall's protests, Hogwarts was _not _really prepared for a penniless 15-year-old with unusual training to show up to school a month early with nothing but the clothes on his back. My corner of the fifth year boys' room in Gryffindor tower had become highly thrift-shop chic with all the school supplies that had been dug up from the school's lost and found.

Each of the other four beds in the room anchored a handful of belongings left behind for the summer by their occupants, and I was grateful that nothing indicated my dorm-mates were going to be snobby purebloods obsessed with new clothes. At least my secondhand robes had been re-tailored to mostly fit me. When I'd first gotten them, I had a substantial amount of wrist and ankle escaping.

Clothes and the like were the least of my supply issues, however. "While I'm sure it's not your preferred method, I think we can find you a suitable wand to at least demonstrate competency," McGonagall insisted.

I knew that wouldn't work. Magically speaking, I was the asshole that you would never trust to drive your Porsche without burning out the gearbox, but who could do all kinds of tricks in a diesel-engined pickup. But I failed to come up with a metaphor that would work for a witch without a lot of experience of technology. I just tried to explain it as, "Justin tried to teach me wands starting out, and I burned out every one he handed me. Magically, I'm a clumsy brute."

She clearly didn't believe me, but equally didn't want to see me break an expensive wand if I wasn't exaggerating. "I've never heard of such a thing. Albus uses a wand without issue, and he's the most powerful wizard I know of." When I just shrugged, she allowed, "Perhaps he'll have some insight."

After a brief floo call to the headmaster (one of the most confusing things entering magical society was their love of using fireplaces for communication and transport), he stepped through into McGonagall's office. The other night's outfit was apparently not pajamas, as today's was an equally flamboyant violet-and-emerald-moons ensemble. "I hear you have a problem with controlling your wand, my boy," he winked.

I still wasn't over how he'd kept quiet about what he'd seen in my head and seemed to be avoiding any chance of giving me answers. So perhaps I was a bit too forward with my retort that, "I hear many witches prefer a big staff to a well-controlled wand." McGonagall made a small, irritated intake of breath that let me know I'd be in trouble later, but Dumbledore merely grinned.

"That was certainly true in history, if not so much recently." He set what looked like a slightly-oversized cigar box on McGonagall's desk and flipped it open to reveal that it was packed full of wands. Most of them were heavily scratched and dinged up. "See if you can find one that feels compatible. All of these are at the end of their practical service, so it's no hardship if you destroy one in the testing."

This wasn't the first time I'd done such an exercise, and I had a good feel for foci after learning to make my own. It didn't take long for me to select one with a reasonably close resonance to my own magic. I held it in my right hand and pushed a trickle of power through it as proof, causing it to emit orange sparks.

"Excellent. Perhaps a simple wand-lighting charm to start?" the headmaster suggested.

I nodded and tried to be gentle, wordlessly casting the light spell into the wand. The tip burst into brilliant white light that was painful to look at directly. It also flickered alarmingly, like a spotlight on a transformer about to blow. Within a couple of seconds I thought I was about to lose it and canceled the spell.

"Very interesting. I have a suspicion. Perhaps the levitation charm?" He produced a paisley handkerchief from a pocket and dropped it on the floor between us and the door.

I knew what he was getting at, and got out of the chair, pushing it away from the handkerchief. "_Wingardium leviosa!_" I swished. I flicked. There was a simultaneous snapping and ripping sound as the wand shattered into splinters that disturbed the paisley-colored snow that floated in the air above where the handkerchief once was. "That's pretty normal," I admitted. "Sorry about your handkerchief."

"Quite alright, my boy," he allowed. "Minerva, perhaps I can shed some light on the situation. You see, Mr. Dresden isn't exactly unusual. It's just that wizards or witches of his temperament don't tend to make it to Hogwarts, or fail out quickly due to not taking to wands. Reports are that one of the incoming students, Mr. Finnegan, is likely to be a risk case of this kind."

"So he needs remedial wand-handling classes?" she asked.

Dumbledore shook his head. "If he was 11, and this was a mild problem, it might be correctable, but would also permanently handicap him as a wizard. Consider an analogy of wands as delicate rapiers. You would struggle to find an expert swordfighter who was not a master of the rapier. Yet imagine handing one to our large friend, Hagrid. Does the fact that he tends to break the delicate blade mean that he is hopeless as a fighter?"

I answered for her, since I already knew the metaphor. "No, you hand him an axe or greatsword." This was exactly why I'd asked Dumbledore if this was a dueling school.

"Exactly. Minerva, Mr. Dresden simply has a magical strength that far outstrips his magical finesse. Even training him to use a wand without destroying it would mean limiting him to the level of that finesse, while constantly having strength that wasn't able to be applied. It may be challenging to adapt some of our standard lessons, but I support his request to create his own foci. It might be interesting to see if we can better accommodate some of the other students in this manner as well. After all, Godric Gryffindor himself preferred to cast with sword and rod."

"Very well," McGonagall agreed, seeming to see the sense of it. "I'll move the charms, defense, and transfiguration tests later and contact Professor Babbling about whether making your own foci would serve as a useful test of your knowledge of ancient runes. I think we have a large stock of cores and other materials in the runes lab but Mr. Dresden will need to find compatible wood from the forest. So speaking of Hagrid…"

And that's how I found myself meeting the only person in the castle taller than me.

It wasn't even a contest. If Professor McGonagall was standing on my shoulders, she could _maybe _look Hagrid in the eyes. While I'm sure the job of gamekeeper suited him, he'd probably want to stay outside in his oversized shack even if he had another job. I wasn't sure he could even fit through all the corridors of the school I'd passed through. But he appeared to have an extremely friendly and pleasant nature. If you were that big and _difficult _to get along with, it wouldn't be long before people got out the pitchforks.

"Yer a wizard, Harry?" he asked me as we set out into that afternoon into the apparently-forbidden forest. He'd tied up his long, curly hair and beard as a nod to the warm summer day, and his giant black hound dog bounded along after us. "It's just, I never met no wizard, didn't use a wand. Even I could use a wand, back when I were at Hogwarts. Had'ta get one twice as big as the other students, o'course, or wouldn't'a fit in my hand."

"I… actually might be able to make due with something like that," I admitted. "My blasting rod wasn't much bigger than that. Different way of setting up the core, though. Did you have to special order one that big?"

"Oh, aye, Ollivander didn't want ter do it, neither. He hates to custom-make wands fer folk. Likes'ta just make up a whole load'a different ones and hope y'ill find one that matches ya." He stomped over a hillock into a part of the woods that was already getting darker due to the dense tree-cover. I didn't add anything, and he ventured, "It broke my heart when they snapped it."

I could tell this was a difficult conversation, and thought about just leaving it alone, but I bit and asked, "Why would they do that?"

"Bad business back when I were in school. Got blamed fer somethin' I didn't do. It's real easy to expel the big chap. Can't have a wand if ya don't finish school. Dumbledore's a great man, though. At least I have a job an' a house."

"Well, as someone the Ministry also just tried to railroad, that sounds even crazier than what I'm going through. Bet you didn't even get a trial."

"O'course not. Another student's word against mine, an' he were the _old _headmaster's favorite. To be fair, truth potion don't work too well on a guy my size. An' it were all Dumbledore could do at the time pushing to keep me out of Azkaban…" We crested another rise and dropped to a part of the forest that looked more like an orchard, all the trees in regular rows without too much undergrowth. "Anyway, here's one of the tree farms. All old growth hardwood. Oh no, shame about that one."

Hagrid had noticed an oak tree in the back that looked like it had split open from a lightning strike. It was a wonder it hadn't lit it and the rest of the woods on fire. Maybe it was during a hard rainstorm. While I was looking at all the other trees, and even grabbed a couple of dry fallen branches that might make good blasting rods, the lightning-struck tree was calling to me somehow. When I touched the trunk, I knew that this was exactly the kind of resonance I'd been looking for.

I wasn't expecting a swarm of fist-sized spiders to rush out of the middle of the storm-split tree trunk and right toward me.


	7. The Stars Speak

I wasn't expecting to be attacked by a swarm of spiders, and I especially wasn't expecting the spider swarm to be chirping out things like "Hungry!" and "Food!" in tiny voices. Fortunately, I did not fall on my ass from surprise. My stride is long enough that even backpedaling, I was keeping ahead of the disturbing, chittering carpet coming toward me.

"Oy! You lot! Get away!" yelled Hagrid, slowly charging across the clearing, but they didn't seem to be listening and I wasn't exactly sure what one big man, a dog, and a crossbow were going to be able to do to stop an infestation of this scale. Plus, I was a little freaked out and may have been on the verge of developing a new phobia.

It would have been a lot easier if I'd already made my foci, but beggars couldn't be choosers when there was a wall of talking arachnids bearing down on you. I gathered up my magic, flung my right hand while envisioning the effect I wanted, and yelled, "_Bombarda_!" With a blasting rod, I can make the exploding charm drill through a couple feet of cinderblocks. Without a focus, the force spread out a lot, which actually worked better in this case. A ripple of force like the trailing edge of one of those slow-motion shots of a bomb going off shimmered through the air and flung the entire swarm of oversized spiders back across the clearing.

I didn't notice any of them turn into spider goo, and I thought I even heard a few scream "Whee!" as they flew, so, I guessed everything was alright? Hagrid had been yelling at them like they were sentient, so hopefully there wasn't an even bigger mommy spider somewhere that would be mad I'd defended myself from her kids. And, bonus, the wave had knocked one of the bigger branches off the tree. I reached over to check it out, and it felt dry and solid. Exactly what I'd been looking for.

"Sorry 'bout tha'," Hagrid panted, lumbering over, "I'll have to have another talk with Aragog about keepin' his kids out o' this part o' the forest." He surveyed the area and then nodded, "Guess ya weren't kiddin' 'bout not needin' a wand."

"A focus definitely helps," I admitted, gesturing with the fallen branch. "Hopefully I'll be able to make some good ones out of these."

"A fine choice. Storm-struck and won through battle," said a strangely resonant voice from behind us. Hagrid whirled around leveling his portable ballista and I started to charge another attack. I wasn't expecting to see a romance novel cover wandering through the trees toward us. A decent Fabio knock-off from the waist up, it took me a moment to notice he was a horse from the waist down. Maybe the forest was actually forbidden to keep young witches from running off with the centaurs.

"Oh, Firenze! Ya snuck up on us," Hagrid exhaled, lowering his giant crossbow. "We're jus' out here collectin' wood for Harry here ta make some big wands. Harry, this is Firenze. He's a seer."

The horse-man nodded in greetings, his long golden hair flowing about in a way that had to involve magic to not see him constantly getting it hung up on low-hanging brambles. "Perhaps not wands, after that display of unfocused magic. The stars spoke to me of a young man that would come to the school wielding old magics. They also say darkness walks behind him. Will you stand against this chasing darkness, or merely try to stay ahead of it? After all, we once pinned our hopes on another young man named Harry…"

The centaur didn't seem like he actually wanted an answer, and I'd never been a huge fan of divination, so I just asked him a question right back. "Do the stars speak of whether I'm going to get railroaded into wizard prison no matter what I do?"

He just shrugged. "The darkness can represent many things. Even deep in the forest, we hear tales of the corruption within the wizards' government. Though the Dark Lord was banished nearly ten cycles ago, the conditions that led to his rise are still present. Stars smile upon you, Harry. You'll need all the fortune you can get." With that pronouncement, he turned and cantered off into the woods.

"Tha's just centaurs for ya', Harry," Hagrid chuckled, "They're always showin' up talkin' 'bout the stars. My guess is tha' they get just as worried 'bout the future as the rest of us. Ya get what ya needed?"

"I hope so," I acknowledged. Hagrid was nice enough to take the large branch from me to carry, while I tied together the smaller sticks to take back. As we started heading toward the school, I asked, "So there's a Dark Lord, huh? And everyone's worried he'll come back?"

"Not everyone," the big man sighed. "Most folk jus' take for granted tha' he's gone. Dumbledore's been tryin' ta get them ta make changes for a decade, in case he comes back. Some'a the stuff tha's been happ'nin' this summer, It makes me nervous. Even if he's really gone… well, like the man said, wouldn't be hard fer another dark wizard ta' move in and start righ' back up." He shook his head, as if to physically banish the dark thoughts. "Don' tell the little ones tha', though, alrigh'? We try ta keep Hogwarts a hopeful place for the young'ns."

"You ever think that maybe you _should _tell the kids what's going on earlier, since they're the ones who go on to the Ministry and keep it corrupt?" I asked.

We walked for a few minutes in silence as Hagrid thought, for him to finally admit, "Mebbe so. It's jus' hard ta look a' those innocen' li'l faces an' think, 'This one's not even twen'y years from bein' a corrupt politician.'" He sighed and thought for another second, and added, "Pro'ly should, though. Got a Malfoy comin' in this year. Ran inta that boy the other day in the alley. Already a real piece'o work."

It was hard to look at such a cheerful, giant man so down, so as we walked back up to his cabin, I tried to soften what I'd been saying. "It's probably not guaranteed, or anything. I've changed a lot since I was 11. Maybe you can keep assuming they're good kids. Just try to give them more perspective, earlier." I tried to add in a joke. "I mean, they're not a lost cause until they're nearly 16, after all."

I don't think he got it. Maybe I didn't get it either.


	8. Proper Placement

The runes lab was, in fact, as well stocked as McGonagall had insisted. My first placement test was Professor Babbling overseeing my plan for making a new blasting rod, staff, and shield bracelet. She seemed impressed, and said she didn't think there would be much to catch up on before I was at the same level as the rest of her class.

Unfortunately, Justin had not put much focus on astronomy at all, short of the basics of using a calendar to plan for ritually-significant dates. Meanwhile, Hogwarts for some reason thought it was a more important class than runes and taught it starting with first-years. The professor seemed to think that I'd be _in _her class with the first-years, if I didn't make some major headway memorizing the heavens.

Since they were electives and I was definitely already interested in arithmancy and runes to fill those slots, I didn't bother with placement for divination or care of magical creatures. McGonagall suggested that I take the muggle studies test just as an experiment. Turns out, I was already ready to pass my NEWTs on the subject. Personally, I figured I knew more about the subject than the professor. After the test, McGonagall acknowledged my assertion that this was a _big problem_.

The distracted and terse potions professor decided that my technique was adequate for my age, though I hadn't made some of the potions that were part of the curriculum and I'd need to know them for the OWLs. Similarly, the related herbology class had a similar result: competent but missing certain plants that were important to the British tests. To my credit, most of them didn't grow in America, and I could probably recognize a bunch of plants these kids had never seen.

My pidgin Latin that I'd always been ashamed of was apparently far ahead of grade level here, and the magic theory Justin had drilled me on was comprehensive. Professor Vector seemed excited to have me in her arithmancy class, especially since my C+ in high school geometry and algebra was way ahead of the mathematical background most of these kids had.

Justin had seen zero sense in training me to ride a broom when there were so many ways to teleport even if I didn't want to just drive a car, so the bird-aspected flying professor declared me completely hopeless for her class. Fortunately, it wasn't actually on the OWLs, just their PE-equivalent. McGonagall seemed strangely disappointed and muttered something about still being down a seeker. Similarly, we had wasted no time whatsoever on British wizarding history. The ghost that taught the class had provided me a parchment that was mostly asking the dates of various goblin rebellions. I figured I might just see how much of that I could self-study, if not skip entirely.

Finally, after a couple of weeks, I had the requisite tools to take the tests for what Hogwarts thought of as "wand magic" classes.

I actually didn't wind up using them much in McGonagall's transfiguration test, since her tasks were more on the vein of taking as long as I needed to turn a hedgehog into a pincushion than the combat transfigurations that Justin was so fond of. With all the time in the world, she was surprised to watch me ignore the foci she's so generously given me time to make only to scribe a chalk circle around the animal or object and treat the transfiguration as a short ritual rather than a charm. "Why the circle, Mr. Dresden?"

"Like the headmaster explained, I have way more power than finesse. When I have time to treat it as a ritual, I can charge up the circle and then slowly shape what I want it to do. Justin called this thaumaturgy. Do you not teach that here?" With that little zinger, I released the circle and the hedgehog immediately popped directly into a pincushion, as she'd specified.

"Five points to Gryffindor!" she exclaimed, even despite what she'd taken to referring to as _cheek_. "I'm not sure if those points will stand, as we have not technically begun the year. But good show. I'm quite looking forward to how the rest of the class will respond to your alternate form of these techniques. Now… have you learned the vanishing charm, yet?"

After hitting a few more points of the transfiguration curriculum in unexpected ways, my next test was charms. The professor was so tiny and obviously so smart that I almost missed some instructions because I was busy imaging a buddy comedy starring him and Hagrid. I was pretty sure I'd seen a motorcycle with a sidecar in Hagrid's barn, and it would just be _perfect_.

If anything, Flitwick was more confused by the variability in my capabilities than most of the other professors. With my staff and blasting rod ready to go, I effortlessly demonstrated exploding, banishing, fire-making, freezing, and all the other charms that involved directing energy or motion at a target and were considered age-appropriate magic. But I was a complete blank on things like the cheering charm and tickling charm that were taught to first-years. "Mr. Dresden. Have you studied anything _besides _combat magic?" asked the half-goblin.

I gave an apologetic smile and said, "In hindsight, it was pretty obvious that my mentor wasn't really a good person, sir."

"Well, we'll just have to show you that there's more to magic than dueling. This year should find you well ahead on the more offensive magics we teach, but I hope you can master some of the more subtle charms. In particular, I doubt any of your foci are appropriate to most of that part of the curriculum. My challenge to you, Mr. Dresden, is to come up with a focus that will accommodate those effects. I can provide you some examples of how the Goblin Nation accomplishes such things, as they are not allowed to use wands. You see, it's not your lack of a wand that surprises me, it's your utterly martial focus in your education."

And then it was on to defense against the dark arts. It seemed like a weird hodgepodge of a subject, as if magical combat wasn't enough to fill a class period so they stole pieces from charms and magical creatures class as well. McGonagall had even let slip that they'd had trouble keeping a long-term professor for the last several years, with some professors being more competent than others and some wildly deviating from the lesson plan. Which meant I had no idea what to expect would be required for fifth year competence.

I wasn't expecting my teacher to be lurking just inside the door of the classroom as I walked in, standing by a large item of furniture awkwardly placed amid the normal tables and chairs. "Ah, D-D-Dresden," stuttered the skinny man in the elaborate turban. "Are you r-ready t-to b-begin your exam?" I shrugged and he stepped away from what I could now see was a freestanding wardrobe behind him, opening the door as he went.

Emerging from the shadows within was a young woman's form. As the light hit her, I noticed that she was very badly burned, bones showing through her skin and blackened clothing indistinguishable from charred flesh. As the shambling dead girl's milky eyes blindly cast about to look at me, she spoke in the unmistakable voice of my girlfriend, Elaine, "Harry… how could you do this to me?"


	9. Up Your Alley

I hadn't fallen on my ass when I was swarmed by spiders, but I did when confronted by the walking corpse of my girlfriend. It's hard to look like a hardened battle wizard when you're all legs and elbows, trying to scrabble backwards across the stone floor to escape. My first love's charred husk shambled slowly after me, asking, "I was under the imperius, Harry. I needed you to save me. Instead. Instead, you made me into this. Harry, just hold me. Why won't you come to me, love?"

Why would this asshole of a professor spring something like this on me? Had someone found her near the house? Was fiendfyre dark enough to reanimate her, or was it something that Justin's ritual did? Perhaps that wraith possessed her instead? Could someone be evil enough to find her body and reanimate it just to screw with me like this? There were so many easier ways to punish me.

The man in the turban just looked on calmly from behind, with perhaps an interested but in no way triumphant expression on his face. Was this just part of the exam? Were the reanimated dead on the _fourth year_ syllabus?

Wait. The exam. What might a younger student need to fight against that fit the equation? As Justin always drilled into me through quite painful lessons, ignore your pain, work past your fear, and solve the problem. Inferi still gave aurors difficulties, and undead with minds were even rarer and harder to fight. And why was it so specific to me? Why keep it in a closet?

It finally came to me as I hit the wall and couldn't scramble any further, and it took me another precious few moments to remember the counter and visualize what I wanted to happen. Her blackened hands were inches from my face when I shouted, "_Riddikulus!_" and channeled my magic. She suddenly transformed into the least threatening shambling dead person I could think of, the Fruity-Yummy Mummy from the cereal boxes. I gave a half-hearted laugh, and the boggart was sucked like it was on a bungee cord back into the cabinet, which the professor slammed shut behind it.

He leaned, relaxed, against the cabinet, and gave me a somewhat sarcastic clap. "Well, D-D-Dresden, that was t-truly a f-f-fear t-to b-behold. I suspect the n-new third years will n-not have anywhere n-n-near such an elaborate horror." He tilted his head in thought, then admitted, "With that d-degree of m-monster and without any warning, I'll have t-to c-c-call that an excellent effort."

Still trying to collect myself, and feeling the massive bruise spreading across my ass, I snarked, "Is that the whole exam, or do you need me to come back when you've gotten something else terrifying to surprise me with? Full moon's in, what, a week? I can come back then for the werewolf."

He gave me an extremely calculating look, then smirked. "N-no, I think that will b-be sufficient for the p-p-practical. I've written on the b-board several of the other c-c-creatures c-covered through fourth year. An oral examination of how t-to c-c-counter them should suffice."

The exam was pretty easy, after that. I honestly wasn't sure why this class needed to be anything more than an irregular seminar if all it taught was how to fight or evade a handful of dangerous creatures. Maybe because it took Quirrell three times as long to explain everything with that stutter? Before I left, he intimated that he was considering working my style of magic into his fifth-year classes this year, which might at least make the class less of a waste of my time.

Ultimately, other than being way behind on astronomy and British wizarding history, and needing to catch up on a few arbitrary points of the other subjects, McGonagall was happy to pass me on to take classes with people my own age. Especially since I didn't give a damn about passing the British tests, except so far as they wouldn't have an excuse to throw me out of school and back into Azkaban, I figured I'd get by.

Considering I expected to have another week of trying to catch up and working on foci, it was a surprise to me when McGonagall called me to her office on the last Sunday of August, dressed for the outdoors. "Are you interested in leaving the castle, Mr. Dresden?"

I smirked, "I knew it. Quirrell _is _going to make me fight a werewolf, and just wanted me to let my guard down."

"While I applaud keeping track of the full moon, as paying attention to the sky will only help repair your woefully inadequate knowledge of astronomy, I don't intend to be out nearly as late as moonrise." She gave me a moment to internalize just how thoroughly I'd been out-snarked. Oh, yeah, we were starting to understand one another. "A few of your fifth year materials and texts are not in adequate supply in the castle. I was informed that several of your housemates will be picking up their own school supplies today, so it seemed reasonable to me that taking you along would be beneficial, rather than just sending away for them."

"Pick up school supplies. Make some new friends to beat the rush. Got it."

Clearly I hadn't been sufficiently enthusiastic. "We can, of course, skip the trip if you aren't up to it."

I tried to put on a smile and think about the positives. "No, no, I appreciate the opportunity to get out of here for a little while."

McGonagall fixed me with a suspicious stare. "I expect that you will not attempt to flee or otherwise do something to cause trouble. From what Albus has informed me, at least one senior auror is likely to take advantage of such a slip." I'd been learning from her poker face, and thought I held onto how close she'd come to my plans. After a moment more of waiting for me to slip, she nodded and lit her fire. "I'm always disappointed when the school year starts and our personal floo connections are limited outside the castle for security reasons. You've used this method of travel before? We're headed to Diagon Alley."

She waited for me to take a pinch of floo powder and precede her. I idly wondered if this method of travel was working off the same theory that allowed Dumbledore's phoenix to transport him. It was the only thing that made this have any sense whatsoever. After an endless moment whirling through the flaming void that was Britain's floo network, I managed to keep my balance after being spit out in a dingy pub. Apparently, I didn't rate a second glance before the clientele went back to their breakfasts. McGonagall was only a few seconds behind me, and she at least rated a, "Morning, Minerva," from several of the patrons.

It took me a moment to realize that this was the interface between London and Diagon Alley. When Justin had brought us here a couple of times, we'd just taken a bus in and come through the front door. I followed the professor through the back and watched her tap a code onto the bricks of the back alley. As the wall faded away, I asked, "If muggles can't see the pub anyway, why do you need to know the secret to get through here?"

"The anti-muggle charms on the Leaky Cauldron aren't foolproof, and some of our enemies are magical but can't open the wall," she explained. "Let me know when you've caught up sufficiently on your history texts to tell me about all the times this wall was the final barrier against calamity."

"Fair enough," I allowed, wincing internally at getting new homework. I actually had two suspicions. One was that someone had just worked really hard on the persistent enchantment to get the wall to slide out of the way a brick at a time. The other was that McGonagall could now use remedial homework as a way to get out of answering difficult questions.

"Here's the list of purchases you need to make, and the galleons to cover it," she said, handing me a strip of parchment and a small coin purse from a pocket inside her jacket. "The Weasleys are skilled bargain hunters, so if you let them guide you, there may be enough left over for discretionary items."

We hadn't gotten deep into the Renaissance Festival-style strip mall that was Diagon Alley before McGonagall spotted the crowd we were apparently here to meet. They would be difficult to miss, since it was so rare to see so many redheads in one place. A boy about my age that seemed to be the eldest of the group apart from the obvious parents noticed us first, and got his mother's attention as they moved from one shop to the next.

While the rest waited for us to make our way over to them, the young man rushed over to us. Up close, it was obvious that he was wound extremely tightly, as he gushed, "Professor, I just cannot thank you enough for the privilege. I swear that I shall not let you down." I didn't yet really have an ear for the different English dialects, but it struck me that he was fighting very hard to speak in the "proper" received pronunciation, rather than his native accent.

It was an interesting contrast with the professor's unrepentant Scottish brogue, "I don't doubt it, Mr. Weasley. Mr. Dresden, this is one of your roommates, and the new boy's prefect for Gryffindor, Percival Weasley. This is Harry Dresden, who is transferring to Hogwarts from a private apprenticeship. I hope you'll be able to fit some time in amongst your duties and studies to look out for him."

I got the impression that Percival was about to start stammering excuses about his very limited time, and was just trying to figure out how to do so politely to his head of house. McGonagall saw it too, and sweetened the offer, "Mr. Dresden was taught a very unusual style of spellwork, that emphasizes wandless magic and making his own focus items. While he needs some help catching up in certain subjects, I believe he could be a great help to _you _in arithmancy, runes, and defense."

That caught his attention, and actually had him considering me rather than dismissing me out of hand. After a moment, he extended a hand, "Pleased to make your acquaintance, Dresden. I look forward to this arrangement."

He had a nervous, somewhat limp handshake, but I got a sense of a strong, controlled magical core. "Likewise. Do you go by Percival or…"

"Percy! You're taking too long!" said one of the other boys, who appeared to be a couple years younger, as he walked up next to us.

"Yeah! We all want to meet him," insisted another one that appeared to be a mirror image, flanking Percy from the other side.

I could feel Percy tense up as they approached, before withdrawing his hand from the handshake. I thought he also had a small nervous tic in one eye from the twins interrupting. "Percy is, indeed, fine. I suppose going by 'Weasley' will be just as hard this year."

"You're assuming a lot about whether Ron's going to make it into the house," one twin asserted.

"Charlie graduated last year," the other explained to me, "so we'll be back up to four if Ron gets in."

"Five next year, with Ginny!" added the first.

Assuming they could keep up this patter forever, I answered Percy, who was mentally retreating into his shell in the face of the barrage, "Then please call me Harry, to make things even. I don't really get the last name thing. I called my old mentor by his first name."

"What a sense of fair play!" the second twin applauded.

"I feel like we're bosom friends already," continued the first. "In that spirit, I'm Fred."

"And I'm George," explained the second. They looked at each other and shrugged. "Unless we got that backwards again."

I could suddenly see why Percy was so high-strung. Having these two for little brothers was probably _exhausting_. McGonagall already looked tired, and she'd presumably had a whole summer free from them. She looked like she was sending some kind of nonverbal signal to their mother to rescue her.

"Fred! George! What did I say!?" the short but seemingly formidable woman shouted at them from across the alley. "Best behavior! No antics!"

"Yes, mum!" they chorused, suddenly all angelic smiles, and headed back to the rest of their family. Percy led me over slightly behind, and McGonagall still further back, likely wondering if she'd made a huge mistake.

As we approached, their mother took it upon herself to introduce the rest of the clan before the twins could do so. She was a hugger, it turned out, which was unexpected. I had a brief moment of not knowing what to do with my arms and then I was free. "I'm Molly Weasley, this is my husband Arthur, you've met Percival, Fred, and George, and my youngest are Ronald and Ginevra." ("Ron and Ginny" the twins insisted, sotto voice.) She continued, ignoring the distraction, "Minerva mentioned you were a new transfer to Gryffindor?"

"He's so tall, and came in on Percy's year, just _imagine _the size of the troll they made him wrestle," one of the twins whispered to Ron. The tiny boy's eyes widened so much they nearly popped out of his head.

I tried not to snort at the boy winding up his brother, and answered Mrs. Weasley with the sanitized version of the story I'd worked out. "I had a private apprenticeship and my mentor brought me to Britain a few months ago. He died suddenly and left me in a tight spot. Headmaster Dumbledore was kind enough to make sure I didn't get… lost in the system, I guess."

While that seemed to satisfy Mrs. Weasley, there was a snort of derision from a nearby doorway, as Auror Dawlish leaned around revealing that he'd been eavesdropping. "'Died suddenly' is certainly a pleasant way of describing it. Why don't you tell your new friends what _really _happened, Dresden?"


	10. Cat Ladies

The man who'd decided to make himself my archenemy slouched off the wall and stood to face me down from across the field of redheads. He was still wearing his dirty trenchcoat and muggle suit, which made him stand out even more amid all the robes. "Maybe your new friends would like to ask you about how your house burned down with your mentor still inside. They might even wonder, like I do, what happened to the other teenager I found out was registered as living in that house. Did you kill Elaine Mallory, too, Dresden?"

That seemed to steal my breath away, like a physical punch to the gut. I barely noticed my hand drifting into my robes for my blasting rod, but, in hindsight, Dawlish did. He was smirking and cradling a wand up his sleeve, clearly just waiting for me to take a shot. Fortunately, McGonagall was right behind me and not inclined to let this play out. "John Dawlish! If I could still take points from you, I would. Imagine, such provocation against a student on a school shopping trip."

Despite his carefully cultivated exterior as a maverick cop, I thought I saw him wilt a bit under her attention. "Just saw his trace move to the Alley, professor. He could have been pulling a runner. It's all completely legal."

"If you have nothing better to do than rush out to chaperone a student's shopping trip, then there's little I can say about that," McGonagall allowed, "but you can do that _without _confronting him with unsubstantiated allegations in front of a crowd. If you have more questions about your case, Hogwarts is happy to arrange additional interviews with his magical guardian present."

Maybe he hadn't actually seen the assistant headmistress behind me when he jumped in, because Dawlish seemed to take a moment trying to come up with a comeback and find nothing. Lamely, he admitted, "Fair enough." Trying to saunter away without turning his back to us, he tossed off, "See you around, Dresden."

Entertainment over, the bystanders that had been gathering continued on their way. The Weasleys had the presence of mind to wait until Dawlish was out of earshot, but probably still lurking nearby, before starting up. "Did you really kill your mentor?" asked the youngest boy, Ron.

"Headmaster Dumbledore has done his own research and declared Mr. Dresden not guilty," explained McGonagall, further increasing my appreciation of the woman.

Arthur Weasley added his two cents for the first time, "Auror Dawlish has a reputation around the Ministry. Among other sterling personal qualities, he doesn't like to let go of his first suspect despite what the evidence says." Between those two assertions, that seemed to mollify everyone, though I could tell the kids would be looking for opportunities to dig for more information later. Molly Weasley started leading us further into the alley and her husband fell back to ask me an unrelated question. "We recently got an interesting load of muggle artifacts in the Misuse office, and they have us stumped. Minerva mentioned you were raised muggle, and I was wondering if you had any inkling about the intended function of a rubber duck…"

After assuring Mr. Weasley that, indeed, rubber duckies with time-delayed charms _would _be an innocuous method of delivering mischief in the muggle world, we were able to engage in shopping. While it was constant chaos moving five young Weasleys from store to store, Mrs. Weasley somehow kept them more or less in orbit and on task. The professor had been right: they definitely had an eye for bargains, as one must with a family that size. Given how the parents doted on young Ginny, I realized my initial assumption of "Wizard Catholics?" was probably incorrect and they'd just wanted a daughter badly enough to keep trying.

With their help, I'd filled out the supply list and still had a few coins left over. While my practical side suggested that I should look into how to convert it into muggle cash, since I presently couldn't even take a bus out of London if I needed to, everyone would be extremely suspicious if I suggested a trip to the bank to change out my money. Instead, I laid out for a few uncommon components that didn't seem to be in the student-accessible cupboards at the school.

"Wideye potion is third year," Percy stated, after working out what I was doing from the ingredients. "Are you planning to revise for the OWLs with that or…"

I shrugged, "Not exactly, but it seemed like a useful potion to keep on hand. I'm thinking about making some girding potion, too. Do you think these doxy eggs will keep?"

While Percy was suddenly having a revelation about making potions as performance-enhancers instead of just to turn in for a grade, I felt a bump and a piece of paper being pushed into my hand. The ingredients shop was packed, but a moment later I caught a glance at a woman leaving the store. Her hair color and outfit was unfamiliar, but the amused, mad-eyed glance out of fine-boned features made it obvious who I was dealing with. She blew me a kiss as she sauntered out of the store, and was under a disillusion veil before I could see which way she went.

My overly-finicky roommate was still trying to figure out whether the doxy eggs were a good buy, so I glanced at the card that had been slipped into my hand.

_Saw your run-in. The trace is a problem. Be sure to take the train. I'll have a solution for you. -L_

Great, my godmother was meddling again. As if I didn't have a big enough problem with Dawlish following me, she was too. At least I knew what the auror's intentions were. Worrying about that madwoman's plans wasn't going to let me sleep easy.

In fact, the whole collection of issues finally hit me that night, after I'd managed to extricate myself from the Weasleys and get back to Hogwarts. Dawlish bringing Elaine back up broke down whatever repressing I'd been doing on Quirrell's boggart, and that, in particular, resulted in some truly outstanding nightmares. I'd given up sleep as unlikely and slipped down to the runes lab to make some more progress on focus items. I'd gotten a nice pile of leather trimmings that I thought I might be able to do something with.

I'd been working in the firelight for a couple of hours before I noticed the cat perched on the hearth. She was a skinny thing, dust-colored with golden eyes. I gave her a closed-lipped smile and nodded at the fire, "I agree that it's ridiculous that they already have to run the fireplaces and it's still August. Scotland, am I right?"

With an interested tilt of her head, the cat began stalking toward me, with a weird hesitance. At first I thought she was skittish, but it was more like she thought I was going to run than that she was planning to. It took the better part of a minute for her to cross the ten feet from the fire and leap up on my worktable. I grabbed a discarded strip of leather and started twitching it across the table like a mouse tail. Another strange look at me like she wasn't entirely sure how to play, and then she pounced on the strip and started playing with abandon.

I'd given up on getting any more work done and was just sitting on my stool petting the cat when an old, hunched man shuffled into the room. I'd seen him around over the past few weeks, but hadn't figured out what he did. "Ah! Not even classes yet and already a late night wanderer! You're supposed to be in bed, boy!"

I hadn't actually even thought about a curfew, used to setting my own schedule as long as I didn't bother anyone else. But I guess it made sense, with a bunch of kids running around without parents in a big magical castle, that you wouldn't want to try to figure out which ones were responsible enough to wander. And I didn't want to disturb my new feline friend enough to rail against unjust authority. So I just nodded and said, "Sorry, sir. Had some nightmares and they didn't tell me about a curfew."

For a moment, I saw a sneer forming and worried he was going to make an issue of it no matter how polite I'd been, but then he finally noticed me petting the cat, and that shocked him. "Never seen Mrs. Norris take to anyone else like that."

"I like cats," I acknowledged, "and she's a sweetheart." The cat gave a faint meow that sounded almost exactly like, "Yeah!" that had both me and the old man snorting in laughter.

"What's that you're working on, anyway?" he asked, looking over at my stitched-together leather pieces.

I stretched it out so he could see that it was almost vest-shaped. "Hopefully a protective jerkin, if the charms will take."

"Aye, that's a good idea. Seen plenty of kids hexed in the back around here." He thought about it for a second, clearly interested. "You an enchanter?"

I gave him the wavy-hand so-so gesture, admitting, "I'm pretty solid on making foci to channel my own magic like a wand. This seemed like a good test of the theory of whether I can make something that will work when I'm not channeling energy into it." He twitched a finger, surreptitiously feeling the leather, obviously way into the idea. Though I wasn't totally keen on befriending this strange old man, he had a nice cat, so he couldn't be all bad. "If it works out, I could try to make something similar for you?"

That got a genuine, toothy smile, and he demurred, "Only if it's no trouble. You're the first one in years I've seen do something practical. All the other young wizards that can enchant things… nothing but _shenanigans_." Thinking of these _bad kids_ brought him back to the present, so he insisted, "You'd better get back to your common room. And no night-wandering once school's in session!"

"Got it," I smiled, giving Mrs. Norris a last scritch behind the ears before collecting my stuff. "Goodnight, sir. Goodnight, missus."


	11. Trainspotting

I was in Professor McGonagall's office, dressed for travel, and confused. "So I floo to the station. Takes me moments. Then I ride a train for hours to get back here."

She shook her head, clearly distracted by everything else she had to do on her Sunday morning before students arrived and trying to get me out of her hair. "You're welcome to wait here, Mr. Dresden. The Hogwarts Express is a bonding experience for the students. You'll have a chance to meet everyone when they're all getting together, instead of them running into you here already in cliques."

"No, that makes sense, if everyone's doing it," I admitted, especially since I needed to meet my godmother on the train, anyway. "It's just… floos, apparitions, portkeys, brooms. Isn't there even supposed to be some space-bending magical bus? Why a train that moves at the speed of… a train?"

"Volume, Mr. Dresden. Over 250 students and all their luggage would be a substantial magical outlay to move, but trains are time-tested and _efficient_."

I moved to stand in front of her fireplace, still arguing, admittedly at this point just trying to get a rise out of my head of house, "But it's not like most of them live in London. They're _already _using magical transport to get to King's Cross…"

"Have a nice trip, Mr. Dresden. This floo will be closed soon for the school year, so this cannot be your way back. Stay out of trouble. King's Cross," she said, flinging in floo powder with one hand and shoving me into the fire with the other.

I staggered out onto a concrete platform, where a mostly cosmetic fireplace had been built into a stone wall behind me, likely in a way it could be hidden when the train wasn't traveling to this hidden platform. The big red train in question was so "efficient" it clearly hadn't been updated in at least a century, coal smoke already filling the bay. If it wasn't for magic, everyone here would probably die of carbon monoxide poisoning.

It _was _interesting to see more witches and wizards than I'd ever seen before in one place. A couple hundred students and their families made for a substantial crowd. Most were trying to pass as muggles, with varying levels of success, but those coming in through the floo like I had were an extremely eclectic bunch. And apparently familiars were allowed to just wander. Full early, I went and found a bench to sit on and people watch with the hope that I was going to get to pet _so many cats_.

I was also considering whether I ought to make a break for it. I'd had to leave my staff back at the castle, but I could manage a lot with just the foci I had hidden on me. This was the first time without some kind of adult watching my every move for a month, and possibly my last chance to escape until Christmas. I'd read up on the Trace, and as long as I didn't actually use any magic, they couldn't pinpoint me. Dawlish probably knew I'd used the floo, but I could disappear in the chaos out into muggle King's Cross, hop on another train, and take my chances that they just did spot checks on tickets. But even in a best-case scenario, I wasn't sure how I'd collect the belongings I'd stashed without magic, much less get out of the country. I needed to know how to get out from under the trace, and, for that, I'd need to speak to my godmother…

"You're considering running." I didn't know how she worked out her timing, but, as usual, it was uncanny. Think of the devil, and she appears. She'd plaited her dark hair up and hidden it under a blue witch's hat, except for a waterfall of bangs hanging across her face, and had on matching robes. If she'd been human, she'd have looked like an extremely attractive woman in her thirties. If she had the lifespan of a witch, she could be twice that. She could be using glamour charms and be any age. Or she could be immortal, as she'd implied on more than one occasion.

She could just be a lying madwoman with an unhealthy fascination with me and the dark arts.

"I don't think I'd get far," I admitted, trying not to look directly at her and do this spy-style. Just two unrelated people taking a load off on the bench.

"That auror _is _a problem," she smirked. "I could get rid of him. I assume you'll tell me no just like all my previous offers. But… after Justin, maybe you've changed your mind."

"I haven't. That was an accident. I think you may have left out some of the drawbacks of that curse."

"It burns such pretty colors," she tittered. "It burns and burns. If you did it right, you get a mascot. I bet yours was a kitty."

"I didn't get a good look at it. I was too busy fending off whatever it was Justin summoned." I was digging. She rarely gave up any information that was actually useful.

"Harry. I _did _warn you to get out. I never wanted you to have to see that. You could have come with me. You still can. I take my duties to your mother seriously."

When Justin was merely abusive, I wasn't willing to take that offer, and him proving to be homicidal didn't make it that much better. This was one of our more linear conversations: usually they were much more like trying to solve a puzzle out of insane, malevolent ramblings. The first puzzle I'd solved is that she considered mind control and torture to be perfectly loving ways of raising a child. "I think I'll let this play out for a while longer, but, as always, I do appreciate that the offer remains open." I'd also worked out that it paid to be polite to the madwoman that believed my mother had made me her responsibility.

"Very well. You can reach me by the usual methods if you change your mind or need more direct assistance. In the meantime, this is what I mentioned," she hissed, passing a rolled up parchment to me. "It goes without saying: you should not be caught with a ritual that allows you to slough off the Trace. Certain parties would be very upset."

"Understood. Thank you, godmother. I _did _manage to save several of the texts you wanted, and will get them to you as soon as I have the opportunity to retrieve my cache." I was hoping reminding her of our last deal would keep her from thinking about how much further this ritual put me in her debt. In many of our conversations, she'd been absolutely _fixated _on equitable deals.

"I knew you would, Harry. You're your mother's son. You don't let surprises distract you from your objectives."

The train horn sounded, noting that it was half an hour until it would leave. Of course, with that distraction, my godmother was gone.

"Ah, I see Crabbe and Goyle," I heard a blonde woman a few paces away say to her small son. "Go collect them and get a good compartment." The woman, her son, and a man with long, silver hair stood about nearby as if they owned the entire platform. From the material and embroidery on their robes, they might have. With such a posh trio nearby, no one had paid a moment's attention to my conversation. As the boy dragged his trunk off down the platform to meet his friends, the man turned and glanced my way, seemingly noting the empty seat next to me before politely looking away and whispering to his wife.

Well, maybe _someone _had paid attention. I hoped they hadn't overheard anything that would be a problem for me.


	12. Railroaded

Shortly before the train was about to leave, I spotted the Weasleys, their red hair distinctive even among a couple hundred other witches and wizards. The twins and the youngest boy headed toward the rear of the train, while Percy split off to head toward the front, since he was the only one I actually knew my own age, I headed that way as well. With my longer strides, I caught up to him as he was about to climb up into one of the first train cars. "Percy," I greeted, catching his attention.

"Wha– Dresden. I mean, Harry. Hello." He looked awkward for a minute, glancing behind him at the car, realizing I might be his responsibility. As an extreme introvert, he probably wasn't looking forward to being my social connection. Somewhat lamely he explained, "I actually have to meet with the other prefects." He absently polished the shiny badge pinned to his robes, while thinking. "You should meet with Wood. He's one of our other roommates. If you find the twins, they'll be able to find him. I'll be by on rounds later."

I let the kid off easy. "Fair enough, thanks Percy. Enjoy your prefect meeting." He nodded, grateful to have been released, and leaped up the stairs into the compartment. Since it looked like the train was about to get moving, I climbed up into the next car, and started heading down the aisles, expecting the Weasleys to only be slightly harder to find on the train than they were off.

The trains I'd been on previously, in my admittedly limited experience, had been set up more like airplanes or buses, with open-air carriages of rows of seats and an aisle in the middle. Some of them might have been especially fancy, with the seats alternating back and forward so groups could face each other, maybe with a table in between. I hadn't actually been on one with this style, where the aisles ran down one window and most of each car was enclosed compartments for around six people (maybe more, if they were very friendly).

I wondered if they actually had enough cars for all the cliques. Based on the kids that already had robes on with their house colors displayed, everyone seemed to be grouping pretty heavily based on house. There didn't seem to be a lot of mixing between ages, either. With apparently an average of ten kids per house per year, that would be too many for one compartment even if everyone was comfortable squeezing in. In fact, the cars were probably _exactly _the right size to make it obvious who was extraneous to the in groups. Could school administrators even do math?

Importantly, for someone like me who had precisely zero friends but liked to affect an aloof and unconcerned air, was there space to sit if I gave up on trying to insert myself into this fraught hierarchy? There were a _lot _of reasons that Elaine and I hadn't mixed with the other kids even when we attended public schools. But this kind of thing was dramatically easier to deal with when you had at least one friend who also didn't have a clue.

By the time I had twisted myself up into a ball of anxiety about how this was a bad idea, I spotted the twin redheads in a compartment surrounding a black boy their age, peeking into a cardboard box he had on his lap. A girl their age sat across the compartment, trying not to look interested. One of the twins happened to see me stop and look curiously, suddenly changing his point of interest, "Oi! It's Dresden."

"He might have _killed _a guy," confided the second twin to the other two.

"Has aurors confronting him in the Alley and everything. It's very noir," the first embroidered the tale.

"He's in fifth year, so even if it's not true that room will hopefully have more to talk about than studies and quidditch this year," the second explained, finishing the thought.

Annoyed that they were so casually spreading rumors that I was a murderer, especially due to how close to home they hit, I decided to step in, "All exaggerations. I'm actually quite boring. I'm sure Percy's shiny prefect badge will remain the talk of the room for months."

"And he's American?" asked the girl, clearly barely sidetracked.

"He might be Canadian, Patricia," insisted the boy with the dreadlocks. "Say 'about' and 'poutine.'" Wonderful. The twins had another friend that was just like them. No wonder Percy had hidden himself up in the front with the other responsible kids. When I just smirked, not about to out my nationality for his amusement, he asked, "Want to see my spider? It's enormous."

"Does it talk?" I asked, deadpan. Everyone looked at me trying to decide if I was stupid or crazy. "The ones that tried to eat me in the Forbidden Forest a couple weeks ago talked."

That stunned them all into moments of blissful silence as they considered all the implications. Point, Harry Dresden. Hopefully that would be the rumor instead of me killing my mentor. The beautiful moment was ended when Patricia asked in an awed tone, "Are you a cowboy? You should have a hat."

"Don't really like hats," I replied instantly, out of reflex. Before they could continue grilling me, I asked, "Percy said I should find one of our other roommates, Wood, and that you two might know where he is?"

"We haven't seen him yet," one of the twins considered.

"But he might be with the girls," the other suggested.

"Katie Bell is going to be on the Quidditch team this year, so Angelina and Alicia went up the train to find her."

"You probably passed right by them."

The boy with the spider realized that I had no idea who any of those people were and explained, "Look for the two black, athletic girls talking about sports with a brown-haired white girl."

I nodded at him in thanks and headed away, hearing the twins thank their friend, "Good save, Lee. We never want to be like, 'you know, the black girls' but it's okay if you explain it. Why are you looking at us like that?"

I remembered passing a group of that description in the previous car. They did, in fact, stand out among the otherwise pasty collection of British witches and wizards. When I got back to the compartment they'd been sitting in, the door was closed and the windows were blocked by three boys who probably thought they were being quiet enough to not be heard in the aisle.

"Fresh meat this year, huh, Bell?" growled the middle boy. "Wood have you trying to fill Charlie Weasley's broom, or you going to join these two and get outplayed by me?"

"Yeah, right, Flint," one of the girls responded. "All your chaser line is good for is trying to drag things out long enough for Higgs to find the snitch. When's the last time Slytherin beat us on goals?"

"It's going to be this year," Flint countered. "Copper was a mudblood ponce, but he could take a hit. Nothing but you three little girls, now? It's going to be like getting run over by this train."

"You're certainly as slow as this train," one of the girls snarked.

"Just watch your back for bludgers, you snotty bitch," one of the other boys asserted, "be a shame for one of those pretty faces to get knocked into the pitch at 80 miles per hour. You know what 'degloving' means?" I did, and my adrenaline started to flow as I thought back to the boggart of Elaine.

"Big talk from someone that can't even hold his bat properly."

"Maybe we'll just show you right now," said Flint, leaning what appeared to be a not-inconsiderable bulk away from the window and, presumably, into the girls' faces.

I'd been content to let the girls dominate in the battle of insults, but I couldn't take the chance that this was going to go as far as Flint was implying it was about to. I flung open the cart door and yelled, "Hey assholes!"


	13. The Quidditch

All three jumped and spun around, clearly not even aware that I'd been lurking behind them for a minute. "Who the hell are you?" demanded Flint. From the front, he looked like someone shaved a caveman and dressed him in modern clothes. All three of their hands were straying to pockets, and I shook my shield bracelet free of my sleeve just in case.

Flint was burly, but he was shorter than me, and I was able to get a good look at the girls who'd been backed against the side of the train behind him. I grinned at what I saw and met his eyes, "I'm the guy that yells 'Hey assholes!' to give the girls you were messing with a chance to get wands out and pointed at your backs." They glanced over their shoulders and saw I was telling the truth, and started to grab for their own wands before I interrupted with, "Uh-uh! How sure are you those 'little girls' don't know any good curses they're really motivated to use right now?"

"Imagine the fun we could have the rest of the afternoon after some body binds," one of the girls suggested.

The bullies were obviously trying to think of a comeback, so I stepped out of line of the doorway and said, "This is the part where you run off before you make it any worse."

After another moment trying to work up the courage to do or say something that didn't get them hexed, they growled and left. Once the last one had cleared the doorway and line of fire from the girls, Flint snarled back over his shoulder, "Watch your back, new kid."

I snarked after him, "You know, the last guy that said that to me hadn't just been run off by thirteen-year olds, so it had more authority. You need to work on your timing." While that probably just made it _more _likely they'd come after me at some point, I'd never been good at keeping my mouth shut. Fortunately, they kept going into the next train car. "Sorry about that, ladies," I said to the three quidditch players. "I don't like to butt in uninvited on someone else's showdown, but…"

They looked like they were coming down from their own adrenaline surge after the confrontation, and one of the older girls allowed, "No, it's appreciated. You can distract bullies for us any time you want." She suddenly realized I was wearing Gryffindor robes and asked, "Who _are _you?"

"Harry Dresden: new transfer student. I'm rooming with Percy and Wood. I haven't actually met Wood yet, but the twins said he might be sitting with you three."

"I'm Angelina Johnson, this is Alicia Spinnet, and she's Katie Bell." I nodded, trying to remember the names. "I think Oliver said he was getting a compartment toward the back of the train. We… umm… didn't want to talk quidditch strategy for all nine hours of the trip. Which we would, if we were sharing a compartment with Oliver." She realized how that sounded, and explained, "He's very nice. But it's hard to get him to talk about anything but quidditch, especially if you're on the team."

"I'll take my chances, I guess. Sad that the twins sent me in exactly the wrong direction, but I guess it worked out. See you ladies at school," I nodded, and set out.

Behind me, Alicia muttered, "That's weird. They're usually spot-on when you ask them where someone is."

I wove my way back down the train, and found the twins again in their car. A little dark-haired boy was in with them asking, "You haven't seen Trevor, have you?"

"Your toad?" asked one of the twins. "No, sorry Neville."

"No worries. He'll turn up, eventually. Gives me an excuse to meet people, at least," the boy admitted. "Speaking of which," without missing a beat, he turned to me, sized me up, and gave a little bow that somehow didn't come off _completely _pretentious, "Neville Longbottom, pleased to make your acquaintance."

"Harry Dresden," I acknowledged, still amused at how _tiny _the first years were. Since that didn't appear to be quite enough social nicety, I asked, "What house are you hoping for?"

The twins chuckled, and one explained, "If Neville doesn't get Gryffindor, his family is going to go spare."

"Not as bad as if Ron doesn't get it," Neville demurred. "I think they're half expecting Hufflepuff, though, so I have a fallback." He shrugged, "Well, needs must with more toad-assisted gladhanding. Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Dresden." He nodded and continued back up the train, poking his head into the next car and asking, "Excuse me, have you seen a toad…"

"Cute kid," I said, then noted, "Girls say Wood's the other way. They didn't want to talk about quidditch for nine hours."

"Interesting," one considered.

"Usually younger kids to the back," the other explained.

"Let's go check it out," the first continued.

"I don't want to talk about quidditch for nine hours, either," the girl, Patricia, admitted. "I think I'll go find Alicia and Angelina."

"You coming, mate?" they asked Lee.

"Nine hours of quidditch or compartment of girls all to myself," their friend pretended to consider. "You have fun looking for Wood." Everyone else had been using my roommate's name normally, but for Lee it was clearly a euphemism. He and Patricia then headed out.

Heading toward the back of the train, it wasn't long before we bumped into a lady with a snack cart, leaving no room in the aisle to get by. We all had to awkwardly crush into a random compartment, muttering apologies to the group of older kids whose room we'd invaded.

The twins seemed to recognize one of them, a guy that looked a little bit like a bulldog, and the first said, "Oh, hey, Tinwhistle. We never got a response from you about that proposal we sent."

"We could be great together," said the other, trying to sweeten whatever deal they were referencing.

"I'll think about it, now get out of my car," the boy they were talking to grumbled in a Cockney accent.

We squeezed around the snack lady's cart and continued. As we walked, they felt the need to explain what I'd seen. "Tinwhistle is an amazing conjurer."

"Barely scraped by on his other OWLs, but if you need something created from nothing…"

"...he's your guy. We're hoping to get him involved in pranking this year."

"But he doesn't take us seriously yet."

"He will, though!"

Finally, they seemed to recognize Wood in one of the compartments in the final train car, sitting talking to the youngest Weasley boy, Ron. My other roommate was pretty burly for a 15-year-old, with hair that was nearly buzzcut, which was interesting with so many other wizards going for longish hair. He was using hand gestures while describing some kind of aerobatic maneuver in a Scottish accent that would put McGonagall's to shame. He caught sight of us through the window and pointed out, "Oi! Fred and George! You left my replacement keeper alone back here."

Ron puffed up at that description, and then gushed, "We were talking about how Ireland managed a shut out at the last playoffs!"

"Our brother's as nutty about quidditch as Oliver," a twin told me, sotto voice.

"If we'd known they were together, we'd have gone and sat with the girls, too," the other groaned.

"Don't you two _play _quidditch?" I asked, as we slid into the compartment and closed the door behind us.

"Sure. But we have an eclectic and varied slate of other interests," the first said, louder, trying to get the jocks to cool it.

The second took that as his cue to introduce me, "Oliver Wood, Harry Dresden. You're roommates now."

"Transfer student," I explained to Oliver's raised eyebrow.

"Fair enough," the Scotsman allowed. "Do you play quidditch?"

I shook my head, "The flying teacher. Moonshine, I think?" Everyone but Ron snickered, as I remembered, "No, Hooch. Anyway, after I took a placement test she said I wasn't allowed on a broom again without Madam Pomfrey on standby and everything within sight covered in cushioning charms."

Disappointed, Oliver said, "That's a definite no then." He turned to the twins and asked, "Do we have any possibilities for a seventh? I'd rather play Katie as chaser, but she could do seeker if we absolutely can't find anyone better…"

After what had to be two hours of quidditch talk, I finally thought I had assembled enough context clues to ask a very important question. "So the game doesn't end until the seeker catches this golden ball, and that's worth 150 points?" Off of their nods, I asked, "Won't that always decide the game unless one team is just drastically better than the other one?"

"Charms on all the balls," Oliver explained, clearly having fielded this question before. "They're designed to create a kind of runaway winner effect. The more points you get up, the more the quaffle and bludgers will help your team out. A team that's slightly better will tend to pull away dramatically, if they can keep their lead for long enough. And the snitch tries to hide until a team is close to 150 points ahead, so it becomes a last-second race to see if you can get it to keep your team from getting shut-out."

"I think our equipment is broken though," one of the twins grumbled.

"That almost never happens at school matches," the other explained.

Oliver shrugged, "We play with what we have, just like the school brooms. New gear is expensive, and a lot of the budget goes to getting a new snitch for every game. It's good practice for the professional leagues, where it does usually work properly."

He was about to launch into an even more technical explanation, when Neville showed back up, being led by a tiny girl with bushy brown hair. She asked without formality, "Has anyone seen a toad? Neville's lost one."

"We've already told him we haven't seen it," said Ron.

"Us too," said one of the twins.

Neville just shrugged, apologetically, as the girl seemed to have noticed the distinctive Weasley hair. "Oh, are you brothers? That must be helpful. Nobody in my family's magic at all, it was ever such a surprise when I got my letter, but I was ever so pleased of course, I mean—"

Before she could get going on a sentence that might not ever finish, Neville whispered, "Breathe, Hermione." He then introduced her to the rest of the compartment. "This is Miss Hermione Granger. She's a muggleborn, but has already read all of her textbooks. She's hoping for Gryffindor too."

We introduced ourselves around the compartment, not sure what to think of the high-strung young witch, when she had a thought, "While it's far too advanced for me, of course, I had read about something called the summoning charm, and that it was taught in fourth year, and I thought that maybe if one of you already had fourth year, it might work to find Trevor?"

"Did that have any full stops?" I chuckled at the girl. I looked at Oliver and he shrugged. I looked at Neville and he shrugged. "You said his name was Trevor? How big is he?" Neville nodded and made a gesture to describe what had to be a hard toad to lose. "What do you think the chances are that he's not on the other end of the train?" He gave me the so-so hand gesture. I gave him a warning look that this was risky. We both looked at how excited Hermione was to see magic. I shrugged, focused on my intention, charged magic into the effect, and said, "_Accio, Trevor_!"

I felt something catch hold onto the other end of the magical probe and stuck my hand into the aisle just in case. After a few moments, Ron, curious, stuck his head out into the aisle to look, just precisely in time to get smacked in the face by a flailing, flying, four-pound frog as it completed its journey into my hand. I handed the distressed but seemingly whole familiar to Neville as Fred and George laughingly dragged Ron off the floor and back into the compartment.

"Did you just do that without a wand?" Hermione nearly shrieked, "Only I heard that wandless magic wasn't taught until NEWT level and even then it was extremely difficult to do with advanced spells, and it looked like you didn't even need do the wand gesture—"

Neville again politely tapped the girl on the arm to get her to breathe, but also seemed impressed. I shrugged, "Apparently the way I learned is a lot different than the normal Hogwarts curriculum…"

I hadn't expected my ride to Hogwarts to be crammed seven into a compartment explaining magical theory to two 11-year-olds while four other people alternately talked incessantly about quidditch and broke into the other conversation when something actually interested them.

Oliver seemed like a classic jock, only interested in maintaining good enough grades that he was in no threat of getting disqualified for sports. He did seem competent magically, and admitted he was hoping I would help him study because Percy was hard to follow.

Hermione was a tiny magical prodigy waiting to explode into the school. Everyone, particularly his brothers and roommate, planned to force Percy to mentor the awkward little girl that was so much like him in so many ways. We had to keep her from rushing to go get paper to take notes, promising that this was just a conversation, but we'd go over it again for her later.

Neville seemed to have had a pretty well-rounded elementary magical education, including a frankly impressive understanding of plants for a first year, but was hopeless when it came to things muggle. I suggested the pureblood wizards and the muggleborn witch consider a culture swap. While the boy had a pretty good polite mask, I thought he was secretly thrilled to not be alone on the train. I could relate.

Ron seemed like the opposite of Percy. Where the older brother clearly had a lot of coping strategies for the twins' antics and seethed about being picked on, the younger brother just seemed resigned to the abuse. I'd never had brothers, so I couldn't exactly decide how much I'd hate so much attention from a family member, or just appreciate being included in any way. Other than being really interested in quidditch, which he probably couldn't even play until Oliver graduated if he was sorted Gryffindor since there wouldn't be a spare position for him to fill, he seemed not to have anything that really excited him.

The twins were a lot.

It was getting fairly late in the day when the platinum-haired little boy I'd seen at the station walked down the aisle, flanked by two fat boys who might make for intimidating muscle once they finished puberty, and boldly opened the door into our compartment. "I thought my Gryffindor count was low, introducing myself down the train. I'm Malfoy. Draco Malfoy. This is Crabbe and Goyle."


	14. Pureblood

Since this seemed to be a pureblood thing that Neville, at least, had done too, we played along and introduced ourselves to Draco Malfoy and his prepubescent goons around the compartment. He tried not to sneer at the Weasleys and mostly succeeded, and failed when he was introduced to Hermione. I wondered if he was actually trying to control his prejudice, or whether the firsties would have had a much different reception if it had just been them in the compartment rather than having several much bigger boys in with them.

"Well, I suspect that none of the three of you are expecting to be in Slytherin with me, so I'll look forward to being rivals with new Gryffindors." For a moment, the tiny aristocrat looked like he wanted to say something to me in particular, but changed his mind, nodded, and headed on his way. What a strange child. Maybe all rich purebloods were this eccentric.

"That went better than it had any right to," quipped one of the twins, when the door was closed again.

"What's up with that kid?" asked Oliver.

"His dad's Lucius Malfoy," the other twin supplied. "Former Death Eater. Bought his way out, and now owns a bunch of businesses and about half the Ministry."

"Our dad's always trying to bust him," Ron interjected, before the first twin could tag back in. He gave a smug look at his brothers for interrupting them.

"Why… why did he sneer at me like that?" asked Hermione.

There was a tacit passing of the buck around the compartment about who wanted to break to the girl genius that she was a second class citizen. Oliver and I, as the oldest, were silently daring each other to take it, when Neville stepped up, unprompted. "Did you read about the Wizarding War in any of your books?," he asked.

She thought about it for a second, "The recent one? I haven't had a chance to read about it thoroughly, yet, because our first-year history textbook is pretty high-level about the last few decades, but it was against a dark lord that nobody wants to name, right?"

We all nodded, and Neville continued, "It wasn't just a war against a dark lord. There were a lot of witches and wizards on his side. Most of them were from old wizarding families that wanted…"

It wasn't that his courage let out, but that he seemed to lack the vocabulary to sum up institutional prejudice succinctly. I barely understood it, but I tried to jump in and help, "Wizards live for a long time. There are a lot of them alive that were kids in the Victorian era. They keep to themselves. They've missed all the things science and technology have come up with in the twentieth century. They think the non-magical world has nothing to offer the magical one, and they should stay separate."

Neville nodded in thanks, and picked back up, "At some point, around the time my Gran was in school, she started to notice that the muggleborn–" he paused long enough to be sure that she knew that meant her and he didn't have to explain it, "–didn't want to start at the bottom and treat the pureblood families as their natural superiors, like they always had before. They wanted to be treated equally."

"But why wouldn't they want to treat other human beings as equal? Can't muggleborns do magic just as well as purebloods?" she asked, halfway between anger and fear.

None of us had the understanding of the world to explain it to her, but it was actually Ron that saved the day with what would turn out to be an ongoing fixation on food. "Well, it's like... you have a birthday party every year, right? With the same kids. And you each get a big slice of cake. And it used to be, if there were any leftovers you didn't want, you'd _maybe_ give them to the poor kids next door. But then, those kids want to be invited to the party, and they want as much cake as you're getting, not just the scraps."

The little witch turned it over in her head, and was smart enough and focused enough on fairness that she eventually figured it you. "But it's not really _your _birthday party is it? It's _magic's _birthday party, and magic invited all its friends, and you just happened to live in the house where the cake has been showing up the longest."

Everyone thought about it and, eventually, nodded that her point made sense too. I just pointed out to her, "Sadly, most wizards aren't as smart as you. They don't even _teach _philosophy at Hogwarts. Basically, we agree with you that it's stupid, but to let Neville continue the story, just take as given for now that there are some purebloods that resent muggleborns because they don't want to share."

"Right," Neville said, picking back up the thread, "There was actually a bigger war that had a lot to do with that a long time ago, but defeating Grindelwald didn't solve all the problems. So more recently, when most of our parents were still in school, a new dark lord rose up and said he was finally going to take back control of the wizarding world for the purebloods."

"It was a hard time," Oliver said. "I can remember a little at the end of it. It was scary. Even though most of the country was against the Death Eaters, in general, there weren't enough people willing to fight instead of hide, and nobody could figure out how to kill the dark lord and end it."

Neville continued again, "When they finally did beat him, some of the Death Eaters, like Malfoy's father, claimed they were mind controlled so they wouldn't go to prison. And there are still a lot of purebloods that agreed with them, but just didn't do anything illegal."

Hermione looked scared, so I stepped back in. "Hermione. Most of the purebloods you're going to meet are like Neville and the Weasleys. They don't care that you're muggleborn. But I'm not going to lie to you and say there aren't going to be assholes out there that _do_ care. And it sucks because most of them are rich and important. At least one of those racist jerks is an auror that's trying to lock me up for something I'm not guilty of, and I bet he wouldn't be working so hard if I was a pureblood instead of a half-blood." I didn't think I'd made her feel much better, so I tried hard not to ruin this little girl's greatest day ever, "Buy you know what?"

"What?"

"You're going to have to put up with some mean people. And it's going to suck. But you're still one of the rare people in the world: you have magic. It's worth it."

That seemed to allay some of her fears, and she nodded, thinking it over. Finally, she smiled, as if thinking about how much she loved magic already. After a minute she asked, "How _did _they kill the dark lord? _Hogwarts: a History_ rather glossed over it."

I wasn't really sure either, since I'd been a six-year-old and in America at the time, but Oliver explained, "For some reason, he decided to go after Lily Potter and her family. She was muggleborn, like you, and they said she was the greatest witch of her generation. He killed them all: Lily, her husband, and her baby son. But they nearly defeated him in the battle, and he was gravely wounded. When he retreated to his base, he called his potions master, Severus Snape, to heal him.

"Severus Snape had one good quality. Lily Potter was his childhood friend, and he loved her. Snape had begged the dark lord not to kill her, but he'd done it anyway. Instead of healing potions, Snape brought his most dangerous elixirs, and blew up the entire house, with both of them and several other Death Eaters in it."


	15. Sorting

The rest of the trip went uneventfully, and we all disembarked at the train station outside the castle as the sun was setting. Hagrid called out for the first years, so the tiniest three of our travel buddies hurried off to follow him. Apparently, first years rode in boats over the lake to get a really impressive first view of the castle. Everyone else rode in carriages, and when we saw them, hitched to dozens of fanged, bat-winged, black horses, I declared, "Huh. Hogwarts is 'effin metal."

"What?" one of the twins asked.

I was about to explain what "metal" meant, but then it hit me that these were thestrals, and they were invisible to anyone that hadn't seen death up close. Most of these students were probably blissfully unaware of the beasts, and thought the carriages were magically powered without horses. I'd been able to see them the first time Justin took us on a field trip, but I remembered that Elaine couldn't see them, and was freaked out when she touched one. She hadn't had a front-row seat to being orphaned like I had. "Nevermind," I demurred.

Fortunately for my anxiety, it was four to a cart and the rest of my compartment-mates didn't feel the urge to run off, particularly once they saw Lee and the rest of the quidditch team in their own cart, so I had people to ride up to the castle with.

We got into the great hall ahead of the firsties. I'd taken a few meals here over the last month, though it mostly seemed easier for food to get sent up to the Gryffindor common room for me. The floating candles and golden plates were definitely a festive touch over the mostly-bare room of the summer. Also, a couple-hundred students filing in to sit at the four long tables were many times the previous maximum I'd seen in here. It was amazing how filling up a large room could make it feel even larger.

Given how there wasn't any food set out, but the sorting hat was prominently on a central stool, I guessed, "We don't eat until all 40 of the new kids are sorted, do we?"

"No, but it's usually pretty fast," Oliver answered.

"Good. They didn't serve anything to eat on the train except sugar. Do they want everyone to stuff themselves and then immediately crash out after dinner?" The twins suddenly realized that was probably true, and looked betrayed.

I wasn't exactly prepared for the hat to sing a song about the houses, but then the kids began to file in. Our table got a handful of students, including one excitable dark-haired boy with a thick Irish accent whose name I thought Dumbledore had mentioned to me previously. Hermione practically flew up to the stool and was almost instantly sorted to our table to great applause. Shortly after that, Neville calmly walked up to the stool and the hat took a bit longer than it had for Hermione, but still sent him our way. Shortly after, surprising no one, Malfoy went to Slytherin.

My stomach really started to grumble down the back half of the alphabet, and I didn't recognize anything about the few other kids that came our way before it was down to Ron and one other boy. Ron was clearly relieved when he was instantly sorted into Gryffindor. Once the last kid got sent to Slytherin, this hunger-intensifying procedure was finally over. While most of the new first years had grouped themselves into the end of the table, Oliver and the twins had made certain there was a spot for Hermione to sit next to Percy, and Ron had boldly shoved his brothers apart to get a spot. We'd probably have made room for Neville, too, but he seemed interested in making connections to his year-mates rather than spending more time with the older kids.

Dumbledore stood after the hat was removed and there was relative silence. He made a weird dad joke about a "few words" that probably had everyone thinking he was crazy rather than just not as funny as he thought he was. But since it led to no additional time delay before the food materialized, I was willing to spot him his eccentricities.

The food was, indeed, worth waiting nine hours for, but I almost choked taking a drink of what I thought was orange juice. "What the hell is that?" I coughed. Hermione tried the juice and got a similar look of confusion on her face.

"Pumpkin juice," Percy explained. "They don't have it in the muggle world for some reason, but it's good for you. It has all the vitamins growing teenagers need."

"I'm… suspicious of that statement," I said, cautiously smelling and then re-tasting the concoction that was like someone pulped an under-sweetened pumpkin pie. "Is this just for the feast, or…"

"Every meal, mate. Learn to love it," Oliver grinned.

They'd mostly been serving me water over the summer, and I finally spotted a jug of it that I could use to replace this terrifying concoction. It was, however, becoming abundantly clear that I'd have to solve the problem of the total lack of Coke sooner rather than later. I wondered, if I got a case of it, would the elves keep it in the kitchens and send it up for me.

Hermione hurried to finish eating, even managing to choke down the pumpkin juice, before she launched into all the new magical theory and class syllabus questions she'd thought up in the half hour since we'd separated on the train platform. Everyone made sure Percy was on the hook for answering them, and he looked vaguely persecuted for the first question before realizing that he actually liked having another information sponge to share with. The rest of the quidditch team had sat next to the twins and Oliver, so that chunk of the table turned to more sports talk. Percy's fellow prefect, a dark-haired girl who introduced herself as Alexis Marie, asked to swap seats with me so she could get in on that discussion.

That finally gave me a minute to meet my other roommates, Chris Horton and Toby Lennox. Chris was a member of a wizarding family that specialized in broom manufacture and quidditch, and had disappointed Oliver in particular for not being particularly good on a broom. Toby was an Irish muggleborn who was considering whether he'd continue onto his NEWTs or go back to muggle education after he got his OWLs this year. Both seemed like middling students more interested in hanging out with each other, and their girlfriends.

Also, there were ghosts hanging out, but they seemed to be house mascots and nobody minded, so I just ignored it.

Finally, once everyone seemed to be more or less finished, Dumbledore gave a more substantial speech. The Forbidden Forest was, of course, forbidden, though he made a particular point of implying the Weasley twins were known offenders. I felt bad for Filch, as there was basically no chance of anyone following through on his desire to keep magic out of the hallways. I wondered if anyone actually cared about the quidditch trials; the houses seemed to be pretty set on who they wanted as it was.

The headmaster's pronouncement about avoiding the very painful death on the third floor saw a ripple of confusion pass through the hall. "That is strange," Percy frowned, "I thought he might have told us prefects his reasoning, at least."

"McGonagall mentioned to me that it was out of bounds when I got here a few weeks ago," I volunteered, "but she didn't say anything about a very painful death. I've seen Hagrid going that way a few times. One time he had a whole dead deer with him."

Percy considered and suggested, "Could be a creature they imported for Care of Magical Creatures or Defense and want to keep away from the rest of the forest." That seemed reasonable to me and everyone else in earshot, or at least no one had a chance to provide a counter argument before Dumbledore launched into a completely tuneless joke of a school song. I couldn't wait to be an old, eccentric wizard so I could amuse myself at everyone else's expense like Dumbledore did.

After that, it was on to the house tower. I was tagging along with Percy and Alexis as they led the first years, when a collection of walking sticks floated around a corner, and then started flying individually at Percy. He narrowly dodged one, groaning "Peeves!" I wondered why he wasn't shielding, before remembering that most wizards were terrible at making barriers that could repel physical objects. I shook my shield bracelet out of the sleeve of my robe and put up a barrier between the bizarre arsenal and the students. As the sticks bounced harmlessly off my shield, Percy gave me a nod, impressed, and yelled, "Peeves! Show yourself!"

Nothing seemed to happen until several canes had bounced off my shield and then a tiny, translucent man with dark eyes appeared, holding the sticks. "No fun!" he shouted, "Wizard shields are for spells, not for sticks! Zoom!" He rushed at my shield and it caught the sticks with a thrum, but allowed him to pass through. The wood clattered to the ground while he tumbled through the air over everyone, making raspberries all the way before flying around a corner.

I dropped my shield, a little winded by handling so many impacts, but tried not to let it show. "You want to watch out for Peeves," Percy explained to everyone. "He will not listen to any of the prefects, or any of the other ghosts except the Bloody Baron. Lindquist, a third year over in Ravenclaw, can also manage him somehow." We walked up a few more flights of stairs to the portrait of the woman in the pink silk dress, and said, "Here we are. The new password is Caput Draconis."

As everyone filed into Gryffindor tower and off to bed, I suddenly realized that this day wasn't really an aberration. I'd be sharing the castle with hundreds of students for the next several months. I didn't really internalize it until the bedroom I'd had all to myself for a month was full of near-strangers.

This was going to be a hell of an adjustment.


	16. Semantics

They certainly didn't care much for adjustment time at Hogwarts, so before I really even had a chance to meet too many people in my house, we were in bed and then having to get up early for classes. The nightmares had at least woken me up early enough to not have to fight four other guys for a shower. But after the summer, I wasn't really prepared to go to class first thing in the morning.

Professor Babbling seemed nice. She was a thin Persian woman who nonetheless had one of the rural English accents that I couldn't place. She came off like an academic, which may have been why nearly half the small class was made of Ravenclaws. Two or three members of each of the rest of the houses rounded out the baker's dozen of students. For Gryffindor it was me, Percy, and a Chinese girl I hadn't met yet.

The professor had spent the first part of the class doing a brief review, which was a bit redundant since I'd heard much the same thing at my placement test. It probably helped the others who may not have done much work over the summer. Toward the end of the review, Professor Babbling pulled back up to a higher level and asked, "Why do we use _ancient _runes for inscribing magic?" A Ravenclaw girl with long, curly blonde hair and a shiny prefect's badge raised her hand, and the professor called on her. "Ms. Clearwater?"

"Because their meaning is no longer changing. They have a fixed meaning for magical purposes," answered the prefect.

That got a sharp, small nod from Percy, but apparently I gave a look because the professor asked, "Do you disagree, Mr. Dresden?"

"Well it's not wrong…" I started, but since everyone was staring at me now, I couldn't bring myself to back down from pontificating. "But I think it has to do more with traditional education. They still only have the meaning the wizard ascribes to them. You use ancient runes because they're more likely to have everyone agree on the meaning."

"You have something to add, Mr. Weasley?" the professor suggested, clearly seeing that Percy was frowning at me.

"Harry just said what Penelope said, only less succinctly," explained the redhead, with a nod to the other prefect.

Babbling gave me a look that implicitly challenged me to defend my position. She was either a really good teacher or an unrepentant instigator. I shrugged, cut off a strip of parchment, and wrote out a series of runes. "What does this spell do?" I asked Percy and Penelope.

"That's a protection rune, followed by a rune of anticipation, and then fire," considered the blonde.

"That's almost always used as a flame trap ward," Percy concurred. "We learned something similar in third year."

"What if I told you it was placed by a German hill wizard who never went to school and taught himself runes from nearby historical structures?" I added.

They both paused, looked at each other, and Penelope said, "Still a flame ward?" Percy concurred.

"But he doesn't know the correspondences of the symbols. He just knows the sounds they make. And he's tried to write 'angst' the best he can with the runes he knows. To him, this is a fear spell," I explained.

"It can't be a fear spell!" Percy snapped. "None of those runes have a correspondence to fear."

I tried to explain it in a way that wasn't smug, I really did. "Not for you. Because you've been taught their generally accepted meanings. But they don't _actually _mean anything. They're just anchors for you to concentrate your intentions into your enchantment. The more certain you are of what they mean, the less concentration it takes to envision the effect you want and lay it into the material you're working on." I shrugged, "I bet powerful wizards with good concentration, like Dumbledore, can enchant items without having to lay runes on them to help their concentration, and could even enchant an item counter to what the runes said, just to confuse people."

Penelope looked upset, she turned to the professor looking for her to contradict me, but Babbling just allowed, "Mr. Dresden is correct."

"Then why are we bothering to learn any of these, Professor?" asked the blonde prefect. "I could have apparently been making up squiggles and using those to cast, as long as I believed in them hard enough."

The professor took pity on me and actually taught her own class for a second. "Because what Mr. Dresden said originally was correct: everyone basically agreed. His example of the uneducated wizard is so rare, I've never seen anything like it. In practice, you and Mr. Weasley would have been correct, though you _should _have also considered whether the runes made a recognizable word as a second layer of meaning."

"Then why does it matter, if we were right?" Percy complained.

"Because, Mr. Weasley, you can't innovate without a deeper understanding. Wizards and witches can go a long way with just the standard meanings of the runes. But they only describe the most common concepts. There are spells you might want to enchant that, should you only have the traditional understanding, you cannot find a way to convey in runes. You'll have to take a step into improvisation to create them, and so you need to know that's possible." She looked around and saw that everyone seemed to be getting it. "Five points to Gryffindor and three points to Ravenclaw for the edifying discussion."

Penelope was looking at me in some combination of consideration and shock, while Percy's neck appeared almost as red as his hair. I didn't think earning points was going to go far toward mollifying him.

Sure enough, as our next class was a double-length potions lesson with the Slytherins, Percy made no secret of sitting as far from me as he could. He grabbed Alexis, the girl's prefect, at the door as his partner and clearly whispering complaints. That seemed to suit Oliver fine, who waved to me to sit next to him. "Cai said you showed up Percy in runes. You as good in potions?" the quidditch captain muttered to me.

"I hope so. You as good at stopping Flint from throwing stuff into our cauldron as you are at stopping… waffles?" I replied, glancing at the trollish Slytherin glaring at us from a nearby table.

"Quaffles," Oliver corrected, "and, yes. You take point on making sure our potions turn out and I'll play defense against the snakes?"

"Sounds good to me," I agreed, as Professor Belby swept into the room.

The professor was an interesting guy, looking something like if Hamlet were put on by 70s gutter punks. His outfits were inevitably ostentatious velvet frock coats with tight sleeves and delicate runic embroidery. Whatever enchantments he had put on his expensive clothes to keep them from being ruined by potion fumes did not carry to his person, and his mid-length graying black hair was inevitably greased up in some strange spiky fashion. He seemed to have an unstoppable nervous tic of running his fingers through his hair, and the potion residue did the rest.

Also, his first name was Damocles, and he was a direct descendant of the guy that had invented the statute that Dawlish was using on me, which didn't make me feel great.

He sat behind his desk and steepled his fingers, proclaiming, "Fifth year. OWL year. You'll have a lot of homework. You'll need to prepare. The curriculum suggests we start with Draught of Peace so you can self-medicate for anxiety. I don't like it. See Madam Pomfrey if you need to be medicated. Instead, we're starting with a review of Strengthening Solution. It's much more useful. Instructions on the board. Who can tell me why the stirring pattern is indicated?"

Percy's hand shot in the air, anxious to show me up. This was going to be a long day…


	17. Unforgivable

"You're fighting with Percy?" one of the twins asked, sitting down next to Oliver and across from me at the lunch table. I decided to assume the first one to begin a new conversation was Fred.

"How'd you pull that off?" asked George, sitting down next to me and across from his brother. "He's usually pretty afraid of confrontation."

"Well, I mean Percy's 'fighting' by sitting across the room and glaring, so pretty non-confrontational," elaborated Oliver.

"Why is this news?" I asked, trying to make a sandwich. "And how did you find out so quickly?"

"Sources," said Fred, as if that explained everything.

I raised an eyebrow at Oliver and he shook his head. So I just stared at George until he added, "The Slytherin girls in your Runes class must have told their common room after class. The Slytherin guys on the quidditch team hassled us about it on the way to lunch."

"Why would the quidditch team bother you about me and Percy having a disagreement?" I asked, genuinely confused.

Both shrugged, and Fred said, "Trying to sow discord among our house, maybe?"

George considered, "Maybe they think we'll try to defend our brother and make it easier for them to get back at you."

"But he was probably being a ponce," Fred allowed, cheerfully.

"So what did he do?" George asked.

"Got mad at me for answering the professor's question more thoroughly than he and his friend had, basically," I explained, then, after a second, admitted, "I guess I did kind of trick him into getting the wrong answer on a thought experiment in front of the class."

"That would definitely do it," Oliver nodded. "Our Percy doesn't like to be wrong."

"Then he should probably learn more about the material than what's written in the textbook," I groused.

"Oooh!" Fred grinned. "Percy the Ponce is no longer the smartest Gryffindor in his year."

"His quest to be the swotty Weasley has ended before it had even begun," mock-lamented George.

"What did Percy do now?" asked Ron, just arriving.

Listening to the three younger Weasleys spend the rest of lunch tearing down their brother wasn't as vindicating as I'd expected. Oliver was happy to chime in from time to time, mostly about pretty minor issues with him being an aloof roommate for several years. While a lot of their complaints were exaggerations, the undercurrent was mostly that Percy had a hard time standing out in a family with seven children, and that they'd teased and pranked him mercilessly for it for a decade.

I kept half an eye on Percy at the other end of the table, where I thought I saw him periodically sneak glances our way. He didn't really look mad at me, as much as he looked sad.

It was still bugging me all throughout history class after lunch, which was just as boring as I expected, but the rest of the afternoon was double-length defense class, and Quirrell threw another distracting curve at me first thing.

"Since it's OWL year, and I am aware your d-d-defense instruction has been… uneven, we will c-c-concentrate this year on areas of the exams that have b-been missed p-previously. P-P-Perhaps most significant: c-c-curses." The purple-turbaned professor gazed across the class of Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs and asked, "Who knows the three most n-notorious of such spells, the Unforgivables?"

As expected in a class of kids that were old enough at the end of the war to have foggy memories of it, we didn't have much difficulty filling the board with the imperius, cruciatus, and killing curses. They were dutifully added to the top of the chalkboard. Thankfully, demonstrations were not forthcoming.

"Who knows some other c-c-curses that are _n-not_ Unforgivable?" the professor asked, clearly going somewhere with this.

Perhaps a bit more slowly in a class of people not inclined to use darker spells, the lower part of the board filled up with curses. I didn't add anything, because I didn't trust where Quirrell was going with this, or how he looked at me.

"This is a large list," Quirrell gestured at the board. "C-C-Can anyone t-tell me… why are these three Unforgivable?"

Perhaps still stinging from this morning, Percy didn't raise his hand even though he clearly thought he knew the answer. Finally, Rose Wax, one of the girls in my house, raised her hand and, after Quirrell pointed at her, answered, "Because they carry an automatic sentence to Azkaban if you're caught using them, while the others involve a trial."

"That statement is _t-true_," Quirrell allowed, "b-b-but not what I was asking for. Why d-do these three spells c-c-carry such an automatic sentence? What makes them d-d-different from, say, the b-body b-bind c-c-curse?"

The class thought for a moment, and a Hufflepuff boy ventured, "They don't have any purpose other than to hurt or kill the target, while the others can be used for legitimate purposes?"

Quirrell pointed at another curse on the board, "What is, then, the legitimate p-purpose of the entrail-expelling c-c-curse?"

A Hufflepuff girl ventured, "Has that one just not been added to the law yet?"

"Mr. Weasley," called the professor, "when was the entrail-expelling c-curse c-created?"

The professor was obviously familiar with Percy, because, on the spot, he explained in great detail that, "It was created by Urquhart Rackharrow, who lived in the 1600s. So it had been in use for up to a century before the Unforgivables were classified that way in 1717."

"That is, of c-course, c-c-correct. Three p-points t-to G-G-Gryffindor. Mr. D-D-Dresden, I suspect you have an answer," the jerk sprung the trap on me.

I sighed and answered, "You can't stop them with a shield."

"Indeed, thank you Mr. D-Dresden. Another three p-points t-to G-Gryffindor," Quirrell acknowledged, as he wrote "Can't Shield" on the board under the three curses. "Mr. D-Dresden p-presents an interesting opportunity for our c-class. You have, p-p-perhaps, noticed that he d-doesn't c-c-carry a wand?" I'd been carrying my newly-carved oak staff to classes all day, so it was probably pretty common knowledge by now. "Would you c-care t-to explain your style, in a historical c-context?"

My urge to make things harder for whatever Quirrell was planning to surprise me with wound up at odds with my love of talking about my magic, so I gave in and explained, "Most historical wizards probably used a staff rather than a wand, with other focus items to cast any spells that wouldn't work with the staff. Wand only became popular in the last few hundred years. It's similar to how rapiers replaced swords and armor."

"Extremely similar," acknowledged Quirrell. "As I t-t-taught some of you in muggle studies, as muggles b-became more c-c-cosmopolitan, they switched t-to weapons easier t-to c-c-carry in a city. Similarly, with the lead up t-to the statute of secrecy, wizards and witches needed a versatile focus that would be easy t-to hide from muggles. You have a concern, Mr. Weasley?"

Surprised to be called out for the expression he was making, Percy explained, "I thought the muggles stopped using armor not because it was impolite in a city, but because it was no longer very effective against crossbows and firearms."

"Five p-p-points t-to G-G-Gryffindor!" Quirrell said, giving the closest thing to a smile of appreciation I'd seen from him. "I thought we'd have to c-come t-to that the long way around. He's c-c-correct. Just as firearms made a knight's armor obsolete, the Unforgivable c-c-curses drove wizards t-to styles that emphasized mobility, so they c-could d-dodge these spells instead of t-t-trying t-to shield against them.

"And, just as the muggles are looking to b-b-ban firearms, wizards b-banned these c-c-curses. The muggles are only about three centuries b-b-behind us."

Oliver raised a hand and was acknowledged, asking, "But if we banned the Unforgivables, why don't more people use Harry's style?"

Quirrell shrugged, "The exact reasons may be lost t-to history, but likely b-b-because the p-process had already started. Wands _are _easier t-to hide and more c-c-convenient to carry. They b-b-became easier t-to make as woodworking t-t-technology and spells improved. B-But… p-p-perhaps Mr. D-D-Dresden would like to d-d-demonstrate for us why his style still has holdouts?"

There it went. He'd put me front and center, so I couldn't refuse without looking like a coward. "You want me to put up a shield and see how strong it is?" I asked?

"Indeed, b-b-but we'll also need a c-c-control. Who has a strong shield charm?" The boy with the Hufflepuff prefect badge reluctantly raised a hand, after all his classmates clearly wanted him to get credit for it. "Mr. Flinton, yes? Excellent. Let's have the three other p-p-prefects on offense." He positioned a suddenly worried Flinton on one side of the front of the classroom, and Percy, Alexis, and the girl Hufflepuff prefect on the other side. "Now, Mr. Flinton will shield, and you three will use strong stunners. Stop as soon as his shield falls. Ready? B-B-Begin!"

Flinton's _protego _looked solid, but it started to flicker after the first barrage of three shouts of "_stupefy_" and fell to the second, with Percy's punching through. Flinton narrowly dodged out of the way.

"An excellent showing. Three p-p-points t-to Hufflepuff. Mr. Dresden, if you'd replace Mr. Flinton?" I grimaced and slouched to the front of the room as the clearly winded prefect sat back down. "Same rules. B-B-Begin!"

I shook my shield bracelet out of the sleeve of my robe and focused my will on generating a _protego _with it. I could get it to produce more versatile shields, but the basic one would be more efficient. I noticed most of the class look shocked both at how I was producing it and how it was larger than Flinton's, providing total coverage from the ground to above my head.

The other three prefects started flinging stunners, and they splashed onto my shield without much issue. After the first salvo, I made some subtle adjustments to the shape of my shield so more of the energy got diverted into the ground. By the third salvo, I could tell that Percy, in particular, was putting a lot of power into his stunners, trying to break through. I was definitely getting tired, but I was too stubborn to tap out before I passed out. I was curious whether I could keep this up longer than they could.

After the sixth salvo, when it was clear just how much longer I'd be able to shield than Flinton, Quirrell suggested, "Mr. D-D-Dresden. Show them why you're using the b-bracelet and not your staff."

I smirked, finally feeling like the guy was letting me in on the joke, and flung my own stunner around the edge of my shield without dropping it. It wasn't very powerful, because that's not what my staff was optimized for, and my aim was off due to having to go around my own shield, but I was pleased that Alexis had to break off her own next stunner to shield against mine.

"Stop!" the professor insisted. "That is an excellent d-demonstration." The three stopped firing, and I lowered my shield with a tired sigh a moment later. "As you can see, t-to c-c-continue the analogy, it's the difference b-between attacking another unarmored swordfighter and attacking a knight in p-plate armor and a shield.

"You may wonder then, why we don't all learn to fight this way? If the Unforgivables are no longer a factor, and focus-making has evolved like his b-b-bracelet so it c-c-can b-be easily c-carried and c-concealed, why d-do we t-teach you t-to shield with a wand?" The professor looked around for an answer as I ambled back to my seat, only to hear him answer his own question. "B-because wands are _fast_. _Stupefy!_"

I finally realized where the real trap was too late, and my shield did, indeed, take a little longer to put up than a wanded charm. I only had it half raised before the professor's stunner knocked me out.

This was only my second run-in with the guy and I was already starting to hate him.


	18. Swots

Fortunately, Oliver was as good at catching unconscious bodies as he was quaffles, so I didn't split my head open collapsing against a desk. Quickly revived, I didn't have to be the guinea pig for the rest of the lesson as Quirrell expanded on the functions and defenses against various other curses. But I sometimes caught glances from him as if he was thinking about what torture to inflict on me next. What had I _done _to this guy?

While defense class was a nice distraction, I returned to my earlier conundrum when I overheard Ron Weasley complaining to the twins on the way into dinner, pantomiming an exaggerated raised hand gesture, "...trying to grab something off the ceiling. Was _Percy _that bad when he was a first year?"

I'd never had siblings, and in a lot of ways I envied the support network that the Weasley boys had. But I could see it from Percy's point of view as well. They seemed to be a family that loved sports, adventures, and pranks. If you were someone who _didn't_, there was probably no escape at home. I'd only had to share the tower with a bunch of Gryffindors for one night so far, and I was already planning places in the castle I could hide to be by myself. What if you were just in a family house, putting up with that for _years _with nowhere to go?

After dinner, I'd made a point of organizing my trunk in our bedroom, hoping to catch Percy in private. Fortunately, he stopped by, probably planning to grab some things and run to the library. He eyed me warily as he went to get books from his own trunk. "Those were some good stunners today," I told him, as nonchalantly as I could manage. "I don't think I could have kept my shield up much longer."

He considered a moment, kneeling and faced away from me as he sorted, then just said, "It was a team effort. The girls are strong casters, as well."

"Probably," I nodded, "but I could definitely tell the difference when yours hit."

"And yet," he grumbled, "your shield held."

"Like the professor said, it's just a question of styles," I explained. "If you gave me a wand, I wouldn't be able to even do as good a job as that Hufflepuff prefect did. This bracelet is purpose-built for shields, and so it's more effective than a wand, which can cast anything." I considered for a moment, "And I had to make it myself. Which gave me more insight into how enchantment works than looks like you would have covered yet in the Hogwarts curriculum."

He stood up again, books forgotten, and regarded me, "I wager you will have a similar story for how you just happen to get an O in each of your OWLs, while befriending the quidditch team, out-dueling a few seventh-years, and casually having time to tutor the first-years."

"Definitely not astronomy and history," I demurred, "they wanted to put me in with the first-years on both of those."

"I just do not understand you, Harry," Percy whined, "You have aurors claiming that you are a murderer, but the headmaster and our head of house bending over backwards to help you fit in. You seem to be muggleborn, yet somehow know more about runes and defense than anyone but the professors." He clenched his fist, "And somehow… somehow… when you go off on a rant about how magic works that has the professor thanking you for educating the class, everyone thinks that makes you _cool_."

"I'm going to come back to how you seem to think 'muggleborn' means that I should be incompetent," I said, having nearly interrupted him there, "but can I make an observation? I'm not trying to be cool. I'm honestly barely holding myself together, so I don't have time to worry about what other people think about me. I'm just happy your brothers haven't yet gotten everyone thinking I'm a murderer.

"What I do care about is being nice to people. I'm basically trapped in this castle until I turn 17, and maybe longer if Dawlish decides to keep riding me. I have to make enough friends to not go crazy with people hating me. I mean, I can't even begin to understand quidditch, but I listen politely because that's what Oliver and your brothers want to talk about. Maybe they'll decide they hate me next week. What I can't figure out is why _you _seem so happy with them not liking you."

Percy looked like he wanted to fight about it, then flung himself petulantly onto his bed, sitting to face me as he answered, "You think I never tried to make people like me? I spent _years _helping Oliver study, but it took a day for you to be his favorite lab partner. I was excited to get to be a prefect, sure, because it was recognition, but also so I could help the lower-years. Ron already has them ignoring me."

"I mean, I don't want to pretend I'm an expert or anything, since I'm pretty much just a giant magical nerd," I admitted, "but… have you tried to make friends with anyone non-academically? I mean, I _also_ don't get why they're so excited about sports instead of literally rewriting the known laws of reality with a flick of their wrists. But for some reason they really want to talk about quidditch, and don't mind if you just let them talk about quidditch."

"I just cannot bring myself to pretend to care," he slumped down on his bed. "I get the thrill of flying. I find exploding snap and gobstones momentarily amusing. I can certainly appreciate music as a distraction or background noise. But when people only want to spend time doing those things in the best years we have to become experts at, as you say, rewriting the laws of reality… it just seems so…"

"Childish?" He nodded, granting me the point. "Percy, I get it. I had to grow up really early, for reasons I wouldn't wish on anyone else, and, if I'm being honest, I can be pretty childish sometimes too. I can't presume too much about your parents or older brothers, but I bet even if they were helping, you had to grow up fast just to counterbalance the twins…"

"Ron and Ginny are quite immune to reason and sense as well, on most days," he added.

"They're at least still pre-teens. Hopefully they'll grow out of it. But, my point being, you're all still young. It's okay to just be a kid sometimes. What are you afraid is going to happen if you take a break, maybe aren't best in the class at something, and find a hobby that's just something you do for fun?"

He sighed, and thought for a moment, then said, "Forgive me for saying, 'you would never understand,' when I expect that you would love to have more family, but… you would never understand. My eldest brother is a world-traveling curse breaker. He is in Egypt, exploring old tombs. The next brother just graduated and is off in Romania working at a dragon sanctuary. While here, both of them were excellent students, and Charles was the greatest seeker the quidditch team had in years.

"Then there are the twins. They are toweringly childish and annoying, but they are secretly brilliant enchanters, good at sports, and everyone seems to love them. Finally, Ginny is the first Weasley daughter in generations, the girl my parents were willing to have son after son to try to get, then stopped having children."

"And you're stuck in the middle of all that, with no way to stand out," I said. He nodded. "What about Ron?"

"I… am actually really worried about our Ronald," Percy admitted. "He has little hope of playing quidditch until Oliver graduates, and that seems to be all he cares about. While he is surprisingly brilliant at chess, that never seems to inform any of his other choices. I worry he will be miserable here, eventually."

By this point, I'd also leaned back on my bed, and after the initial confrontational stance we were having the kind of relaxed roommates conversation I'd sometimes had with Elaine. I thought about it, and then asked, "What do you want to do with your life, Percy?"

"Assuming I can achieve the requisite scores on my OWLs and then on my NEWTs, I should be able to enter the Ministry at a middle grade and then rise through the ranks over several years."

"Law enforcement? Healer? Diplomat?" I asked.

"Whichever department has an opening, I suppose. My father thinks that there might be an opening in the Department of International Magical Cooperation soon, where I could take charge of updating the British standards and regulations to the European level. We really do allow shoddy craftsmanship on things like cauldrons…"

I was speechless long enough to let him ramble on to even more mind-numbing fixation on bureaucracy. Finally, I had to interrupt him. "Maybe you're passionate about this and, if so, tell me to shut the hell up, but… are you really going to become one of the greatest wizards this school has produced this generation and then act like you're excited to work as an undersecretary in an office?"

"Well, it is quite a secure position. For all that we had to watch our spending, my father is relatively low level within the Ministry and is able to support a family with seven children on his salary alone. And once you begin to rise in the hierarchy, absent major scandals you have a guaranteed paycheck for life…"

"You're being too adult about things again, man," I insisted. "Thought experiment time. Through some magical accident in seventh-year charms class, right after you get all Os in your NEWTs, you get thrown into a parallel Earth with no way back. Your family is safe but you'll never see them again and they'll never know what happened to you. The only asset you have is your brain and your wand, with nobody having any expectations of you one way or the other. What do you want to do with your life?"

"Well… I mean, allowing that admittedly nigh-impossible scenario for the purposes of this thought experiment, the very existence of a parallel universe reachable by magic would seem to call into question several of the known magical laws, particularly elements of Gamp's laws. Assuming I could work in a laboratory with sufficient funding, just trying to unravel what happened to me would be a feat worthy of a lifetime."

I clapped, and said, "Congratulations. That is a real, honest answer. Doesn't the Ministry have a department designed to do exactly that kind of thing? Why aren't you angling to work there?"

"The Department of Mysteries does not publish their guidelines for admittance, so it has always seemed safer to me to pursue a more opportunistic strategy as it comes to job placement," he admitted.

"Are you making stuff?" I asked, remembering that he hadn't seemed to understand why I'd want extra potion supplies for my own creations. "Are you doing any independent research projects? Are you investigating any of the existing magical theories and trying to see if you can open up new possibilities?"

"With what time?" he asked, rhetorically. "I have three electives as classes and am independently studying the other two, prefect duties, and study for OWL year. I honestly worry if I can find time to get enough sleep."

I scoffed, "You've certainly planned out your life for a nervous breakdown and an early grave. I assume you're also in arithmancy. What's the other elective you're going to class for?"

"Muggle studies," he admitted, with a scowl.

"That look means you know it's worthless. If you really want the OWL, I'll teach you. We can do field trips. You'll learn more in five minutes walking around London than in a month of the class. Plus Divination independent study _can't_ be that much of your time. And I'll help you study for OWLs, because I probably need you to help me anyway."

"Why are you so interested in my career and emotional well being, Harry?"

I had to think about it for a second. Why _was _I so interested? I'd come in here just trying to defuse whatever he was mad at me about. Was it that I suddenly saw someone that would be so easy for me to save from his own dumb choices? Maybe it was that I'd spent one day here and already realized that, in a school full of people that could do _freaking magic_, the awesome power of wizardry was treated as just another boring school subject to "skive off" of to go play sports, and Percy was one of the few that took it seriously. Maybe I did feel a little guilty for showing up and stealing what little thunder the guy had in our first class together. What I said was, "I don't know, really, man. It's just, I think you have it in you to be a magical _badass_, and I don't like that your brothers don't even see it and you're going to squander it all to be a bureaucrat."

He looked at me for a few seconds, as if to figure out if I was messing with him. But he eventually said, "Fair enough. I will certainly consider it." He was quiet for a few more seconds. "I _am _still angry at you for making me look stupid in front of Penelope."

Oh. Suddenly it all made sense. He was trying to show off for the _girl_. I grinned, "Percy, this is great! Aren't Ravenclaws supposed to be the genius researchers around here? Imagine how much you'll be able to show off for her when you let her in on your thrilling extracurricular research project…"


	19. Matchmaker

It was good that I learned about Percy's crush, because Tuesday worked out to us spending a ton of time in classes with her. Charms and transfiguration in the morning both happened to be the classes Gryffindor shared with Ravenclaw, arithmancy after lunch, and then the Gryffindors in arithmancy missed the normal history class that was up against arithmancy, so sat it with Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff. The only class of the day where we _wouldn't _see Penelope was mid-afternoon herbology with the Hufflepuffs.

I was honestly surprised I hadn't noticed the crush before, and maybe I was imagining things but I thought both that it was reciprocated and that their respective heads of house thought it was a good match. I definitely thought I was sending pretty definite looks at Flitwick and McGonagall that said, "Look at these two, aren't they so adorable and we should make sure they get together?" Maybe they thought I was just being weird, rather than giving me tacit permission to overcompensate for stealing Percy's dating mojo the day before.

When McGonagall set up the lesson for the day, I certainly thought she was sending me signals. "As a bit of a first-day review for OWL year, let's think back to one of the first transfigurations you accomplished as first years, where you transformed a matchstick into a needle. The reverse is actually far more complicated, if your changes are more than cosmetic. I'd like you all to turn a needle into a matchstick, which is capable of being struck to produce flame."

"Professor," I began, barely able to control my smirk, "I didn't actually cover this as a first year, so I may need some extra help. Can I partner with Percy and… maybe, Ms. Clearwater so I get a cross-house understanding of how this works?"

"If they're amenable," she allowed.

As we gathered around a desk, Penelope asked, "Why ask to work with me, Dresden?"

I shrugged, trying to look like it was no big deal, "Percy mentioned you were brilliant."

"He did?" she said, suddenly paying attention to Percy, who shrugged and was trying to keep from turning as red as his hair.

"Well you are, Ms. Clearwater," he said, without any sense that he was being anything but forthright. "Though I suspect Harry does not actually need much help from _me_."

I gave him a frown for being overly self-deprecating, even though he wasn't _wrong_, but said, "I assume you know way more about Gamp's laws than I do, after you were just rattling them off for our thought exercise last night. Transfiguring an inert object to a chemically complex one interacts with those, right?"

"Actually, yes," he admitted, suddenly off in magical wonk theory land. "In this kind of transfiguration, you are changing the iron of the needle into the carbon of the match, but the remaining chemistry is essentially conjured from raw magic. Otherwise, cancelling the transformation after the match burned could cause gaseous particles to change back into iron in a chemical configuration that does not make sense."

Penelope interjected, "But doesn't the smoke contain some of the carbon from the match? Wouldn't that part still change back to iron and cause similar problems?"

He lit up, "If it was a pure iron needle, certainly. I think that is why we use steel needles for the process, because the steel contains trace amounts of carbon in its structure. I would wager, if fully tested under controlled conditions, any carbon turned into smoke is either pure magic or the carbon contained in the steel of the needle."

"Which we could test by reverting the ashes of the match and seeing if they're pure iron!" said Penelope, excited.

I just grinned at the two nerds and mentioned, "Then let's figure out how to get the transfiguration to work, so you can move on to the fun, sciency part."

The process _did _prove to be somewhat tricky, with all three of us getting matches that wouldn't light the first couple of times, but each succeeding to McGonagall's delight by the end of class. Both of my lab partners were very intrigued by my practice of using chalk circles for transfiguration instead of a focus. Both also seemed delighted when, as they'd hypothesized, the ashes of the burnt matches reverted back to pure iron once de-transfigured.

After a quick lunch, the first arithmancy class was the most intimate teaching experience so far, much more similar to my previous schooling since there were only six students in the class. In addition to Percy, Penelope, and me, the other Gryffindor prefect, Alexis, and two Ravenclaw students were present. None of the other three were also taking runes, which I figured was a mistake because the classes were very complimentary. There were a small number of Hufflepuffs and a Slytherin taking the class as well, but they weren't there on Tuesdays due to a conflict with another class.

Professor Vector was a formidable, dark-haired woman who favored crimson robes. She had an edge of foreign pronunciation to her English accent, as if she'd been born elsewhere, maybe Russia. Her introductory speech was succinct, "Arithmancy OWLs are about the basics, so this year we will perfect them. You will prove that you are competent in algebra, geometry, and basic trigonometric functions that translate one into the other. You will diagram the spell matrices for the signature charms and curses taught in your other classes. You will be able to translate Latin with high proficiency, as well as some Ancient Greek. You will be able to hear the incantation and see the motions for an unfamiliar spell, and use that to estimate the likely results of casting the spell. Conversely, you will be given the desired effects of an unfamiliar spell and suggest the necessary gestures and cadence of the spoken spell phrase.

"This has all been a warm-up. While I want you to prioritize getting high marks on your OWLs, never forget that the first three years of this class are just to give you the tools you need for your real purpose. Next year, we start in earnest learning to improve and spontaneously adapt existing spells, as well as to create new spells entirely. If you're feeling confident and keeping up with your homework, I'm happy to help you get a head start on that process this year. It's the real fun of arithmancy, and I'm excited to get us there.

"But, for now, let's start our review of algebra."

As we were packing up, it was Penelope that approached Percy and mentioned, "I'm really looking forward to actually making spells. I may take the professor up on the offer to start early."

"Sounds like a really cool _extracurricular project_," I said, raising an eyebrow at Percy.

Percy looked like he was going to be stubborn, but accepted the hint after a moment and said, "What Harry is saying, is that we were talking last night about possible student projects that would look good on an application for something like the Department of Mysteries after Hogwarts. You would be more than welcome to be involved, if you have the time."

She bit her lip in worry, and said, "Do you think I'd actually have a shot?"

I was confused, but Percy seemed to understand, and said, "While their hiring practices and alumni are largely unknown, as I understand it, the Unspeakables are much more meritocratic than most of the other departments. Most of the jobs at the Ministry, as Harry bluntly brought to my attention, do not actually use much magic, so they tend to go to the better-connected. But as far as I know, everyone in Mysteries is extremely competent, so that makes it harder to get in just based on a family name."

That was a relief for the the apparently non-pureblood Ms. Clearwater, so she nodded, "I'm definitely up for discussing it. Let me know. I better get to creatures class, though!"

"We have to go to the greenhouses. Can we walk you out of the castle?" asked Percy, puffling up a little as he found the courage to be gallant.

"Why thank you, Mr. Weasley," she grinned.


	20. Yearbook

Wednesday and Thursday were an arbitrary shuffle of my first two days of classes, but, because the scheduling was so weird, after lunch on Thursday, I was done for the week. It took me until Friday afternoon to realize that I had a big problem: the wizarding world was _boring_. If I had a free afternoon to myself previously, I could head to the park, go see a movie, or choose from libraries packed full of novels.

The wizarding world didn't have any kind of analogue to film, despite the moving photographs and paintings, and mostly didn't seem to realize what they were missing. And another downside of there being one wizard for a thousand muggles and insular as well was the lack of quality fiction. According to a popular sci-fi writer, 90% of everything was crap. In the muggle world, that 10% of possible good stuff was still a huge number of books. But for every thousand quality muggle novels, there was one wizarding novel. And, unlike in the rest of the world, good art didn't really seem to cross easily between countries.

I'd spent most of Friday sampling Hogwarts' fiction section—just a single shelf—and was really getting worried. I broke down and asked the dour librarian, Madam Pince, what she recommended for entertainment reading. "Well, I can see your difficulty," she explained. "I'm sure muggles have to invent interesting stories from total fiction, but plenty of wizards and witches lead such interesting lives that the biographical section can serve as entertainment reading. If you're looking for something modern, we have a set of Gilderoy Lockhart's memoirs."

She was certainly right, in that Lockhart was one of the better writers in the wizarding world. How anyone thought he was anything but a novelist baffled me, however. Did he pretend to be this Poirot-esque dandy adventurer when he met his fans? I'd be interested to meet the guy, but his command of magic wouldn't have been impressive for a muggle. How did wizards that had been to school not see the obvious problems in his descriptions of spells and creatures?

Percy found me ensconced in a reading nook before dinner, halfway through _Year with the Yeti_. "My mother loves those," he noted, voice low to keep Pince from being upset.

"Have you read them?" I asked. He shook his head and I flipped back to a page I'd marked earlier. "Read that paragraph."

Obliging, though with a confused expression, I watched Percy's face tense up, and he whispered, "That is completely inaccurate." He glanced at my face, saw me nodding, and asked, "Is it all like this?" I pointed to the other places I'd marked, and he read those as well. "I… this is a _fourth year spell_, but he got it completely wrong. Mother said these were _biographies_."

"The writing is good," I grimaced. "Maybe everyone just gets caught up in the story and overlooks the inaccuracies, or thinks they're deliberately changed to prevent kids from trying it."

"Perhaps," he allowed. "While I can understand pleasure reading, you might have more luck availing yourself of the nonfiction books. Hogwarts has quite a number of rare books of spells and studies of magical theory that you cannot read anywhere else."

"Fair point, I guess," I admitted. "I'm just trying out ways to de-stress before I hit the part of the school year where there's no way I'm going to have the willpower to try to learn for pleasure."

He nodded, "Sport, table games, and hand crafts are the main contenders, I fear. I, as noted, have little free time that is not devoted to homework and prefect duties."

"That reminds me: what's the deal with homework? I mean, we're going to take OWL exams at the end of the year and that controls which sixth-year classes you can take. But, if I just decided I didn't want to do homework because I thought I could pass the OWL without it…"

He winced, the idea of shirking schoolwork clearly almost physically painful to him, but he allowed, "There would likely be very little consequence. For flagrant violations, you might be assigned detentions or docked house points. But, particularly with no guardians likely to punish you for poor marks, dashing off mediocre essays might not matter much. As I understand it, many students here are already poor writers and logicians, so sub-par written work with strong practical demonstrations might not even be noticed."

I grinned, "You thought about it but couldn't bring yourself to sandbag, could you?"

"While I am considering your suggestion for other career options, I _have _planned to work at the Ministry for quite some time. 'Sandbagging' as you refer to it _is _a classic bureaucratic ploy. And I _do_ wish quality written work was better incentivized. The professors barely even give out house points for strong essays compared to how many they give on-the-spot for class participation."

"And the house points barely matter anyway," I grumbled.

"Quite. Well, I need to go find a few more books before dinner. See you there." He nodded and wandered off.

Not really feeling like finishing the "biography" I'd been reading, I started wandering the library looking for something else to catch my eye. It was by happenstance that I found the shelves devoted to school yearbooks. I almost completely disregarded it, before remembering that McGonagall had mentioned my mother went to school here, albeit briefly. Maybe she was in the yearbooks.

It was harder than it should have been, since I didn't actually know my mother's exact age or maiden name. I wound up having to come back after dinner and most of Saturday morning before finally finding a promising candidate in the 1967-1968 yearbook. Margaret McGregor was a fifth-year Slytherin who hadn't appeared in the next year's book, so must have left after earning her OWLs. It was hard to be sure with her as a 16-year-old against the one adult picture of my mother that my father had shown me, but I thought I saw a family resemblance.

I knew for sure when I found, toward the end of the book, a candid photo of her and another girl relaxing by the lake. Even sitting on the shore, she was obviously much taller than her friend, which would make sense for my frankly unusual height. But while I'd never gotten a really good look at my mother, I had plenty of opportunity to recognize my godmother (even though she was over twenty years younger in the photo). All her implications of being some kind of ancient immortal were washed away by the simple caption of the photo.

_Best friends relax by the lake (fifth years Margaret McGregor and Bellatrix Black)._


	21. Gaining Focus

The next Thursday afternoon I was, as McGonagall had warned, set up in a spare classroom trying to see if students that were having trouble with wand magic might have an affinity with my style. The mostly-empty stone room had only a few uncomfortable wooden chairs, a table, and, unfortunately, a window with a view of the lawn.

"Aw, I should be out there, showin' off me flyin'!" complained Seamus Finnegan, his face pressed almost against the window. He was a tiny Irish first-year with bowl-cut black hair and mostly-missing eyebrows. Apparently, his early attempts at wandwork and potions were extremely prone to fiery explosions.

"I should be out there with my house instead of stuck with a bunch of Gryffindorks," whined Millicent Bulstrode, hunched in one of the chairs. She was a moon-faced, dark-haired girl with a pronounced jaw who already had a couple inches of height on most of the boys in her class. McGonagall told me to do what I could; rather than explosions, she wasn't getting much of anything from her attempts at casting spells.

"Well, personally, _I'm_ quite happy to get out of physical education for something more interesting," proclaimed Hermione Granger, who was already at the head of her class for wand magic, but had somehow convinced McGonagall that she should sit in on this rather than have to take flying lessons with the rest of her year.

She wouldn't explain how, but McGonagall had found a bunch of non-wand foci somewhere in the school's storage, and I'd kept several of them. I was reasonably certain I understood what they'd been designed for, and was able to produce some miscellaneous spells with them. The others had been either too old or too obscure for me to risk putting in the hands of 11-year-olds.

I set out the three foci I'd found that seemed designed for light: a copper rod about the size of a pen that was covered with verdigris, a palm-sized circular steel-and-tin amulet with a quartz crystal mounted in the middle, and an honest-to-history Edison-style light bulb with runes etched along the base.

"I know it's not fair, Finnigan," I began, grabbing his attention and motioning him to take a seat, "but I don't particularly want to be here either, so the sooner we get through this the sooner we all get back the rest of our afternoons." The boy grudgingly took a seat, and Hermione sat up in hers at attention. "The only charm you're supposed to have already had was the light charm, right?"

"I've actually had a lot of success with several charms in the textbook including–" began Hermione, before Bulstrode cut her off.

"He means what have we all learned, mu– Granger, not what you've been prissing about in class," the stocky girl said cuttingly to the over-eager muggleborn. "Yes, wand-lighting is the only charm we've been taught yet. I hear Finnegan set his wand on fire."

"At least mine did somethin', ya harpy!" shouted the Irish boy, surprised at being brought into the fight with Hermione.

Before they could get into a petulant three-way argument, I grabbed the light bulb and shouted, "_Lumos!_"

The flash of brilliant white light from the now-lit bulb got their attention. I was going to have to send a very sarcastic thank you note to McGonagall for including house rivalries in my involuntary volunteer teaching time.

"Thanks for the answer," I snarked, "Can we do the lesson without trying to get into a fight every five seconds?" Three tiny heads gave petulant nods, so I continued. "This is a purpose-built focus. The three I've set out can do the light charm and possibly some other similar spells. Unlike your wands, which have to be complicated enough to produce _any _spell, these are much simpler enchantments.

"The first part of that is materials. Your wands are rare woods and exotic cores, each carefully attuned to your magical signatures. Purpose-built foci are a lot cheaper to make, and often work well for anyone that knows the spell.

"But the bigger benefit is that you can usually do without wand motions, which is probably what's tripping the two of you up. I never had any talent for getting them right, either. Wand motions are because wands are general tools, and you have to align their inner magical matrix with the matrix of the spell–"

"What?" Finnegan asked. Bulstrode seemed to be closer to getting it, and Hermione clearly wanted to explain it in exhaustive detail to the two.

Before the Gryffindor witch could start rapidly repeating the paragraphs from the textbook she'd likely memorized, I rephrased, "A spell is just a way of expressing your own inner magic in a way that happens to do what you want. It's like you're making an invisible web of energy, and if you get it shaped right, it does what you want. The spell words and foci are all just ways of helping your mind create that pattern."

I set down the light bulb, which winked out when I let go of it. I'd had to work hard the last couple of nights to get this trick down, and I summoned up my magic, visualized what I wanted from the simple spell, and wordlessly passed energy into my hand. It was much dimmer than the bulb, but a flickering light was clearly coming from the palm of my hand. Hermione's eyes grew wide because she knew how hard that was supposed to be, but at least the other two looked mildly impressed.

Closing my hand and ending the spell, I continued, "You don't actually need the focus or the words, but it makes magic a hell of a lot easier." Hermione looked very slightly offended at the curse word, but it didn't bother the other two, who both seemed like the type to curse up a storm in private. "But, anyway, since the wand is a general tool, making the right motion is important to getting your mind and the tool to agree on the shape of the magic you want to make. Specific foci, like these, already have that part of the spell matrix embedded in them. Think of it as already having the wand motion built in. You just have to do the rest of the spell. So, I guess, everyone try visualizing your intention like Flitwick taught you and saying the spell word."

Seamus grabbed the light bulb, having already been shown it worked. Millicent took the amulet, and Hermione grabbed the copper rod. It actually took Hermione a moment to get it to light up, fighting her urge to make a wand motion. The lighting charm didn't have _much _of a motion, but it was still present and could potentially misalign a focus.

Not long after the precocious muggleborn, the other two managed to produce light from their foci, to their obvious delight. "That was much easier!" exclaimed the boy, and the Slytherin witch couldn't help but nod in agreement.

I was now looking at probably taking on part-time apprentices. I'd almost been hoping they wouldn't have been able to get a light with these either. Oh well, maybe I could talk McGonagall into giving me some token payment if this became a regular thing. Being flat broke was really cutting into my ability to make long-term plans. "Good job. I don't want to make you think they'll all be this easy, though. The light charm is still one of the simplest possible spells, which is why you learn it first.

"For more complex spells, there might be some rudimentary motions necessary, and if you're using a focus made by someone else it may actually take some trial and error to 'feel out' what you have to do to get it to work perfectly. If you really get into this, you basically have to make most of your own foci, which is a lot of extra work on top of meaning you really need to take runes and maybe even arithmancy once you get to choose electives."

That brought Seamus and Millicent down a bit, though from her pleased grin I could tell Hermione had _already _planned to take those classes just as soon as someone would let her. "Did you know that so few students can do _any _spells without wands that it's a huge bonus to your practicals for your OWLs and NEWTs to be able to demonstrate that you can?" exclaimed the bushy-haired Gryffindor.

The two worried kids perked up a bit at that, and promised that they'd consider it. I was suddenly hoping that they agreed because it was very clear that after this I'd be training Hermione _anyway_, so I might as well get some kind of formal credit for it.

As we left the classroom, Mrs. Norris, Filch's cat, was curled up in a window near the end of the hall, soaking up the afternoon sunlight. "It's tha' terrible tattlin' beastie," groaned Seamus.

The two girls, to their apparent mutual chagrin, both exclaimed "Kitty!"

I smiled and said, "That's my friend, Mrs. Norris. She's a sweetheart if you aren't causing trouble for Mr. Filch. Do you want to meet her?" Seamus shook his head and headed back to his room, but the two girls were soon giving the skinny cat very thorough pets. Maybe this would work out, after all.


	22. Family Honor

I was up late that evening, sitting in a corner of the Gryffindor common room and reading. I was up late _most _nights, hoping that going to bed exhausted would hold off the nightmares. The room was silent save for the popping of the banked fire, which provided most of the light. I'd retained the light amulet from the foci this afternoon, since it reminded me of my own normal focus for light, which I hoped to recover some day soon. I was feeding it just enough power to read by, and with the light coming from my chest, I assumed I was almost invisible to the rest of the room. I didn't want to be hassled about why I was up when the second-years went to astronomy class later.

For a minute, I thought Hermione had already talked herself into second-year classes as she made her way into the common room in a pink bathrobe, sat in a chair near the exit, and extinguished her wand. Because of the hiding in the dark, I assumed she'd had a fight with her roommates, and I was feeling too selfish to stick my nose in and help her work it out.

So I was surprised when she turned out to have chosen the spot to confront Neville and Ron, who had also slipped into the room in bathrobes and were on their way out. I wasn't paying enough attention to listen to the whole conversation, but I caught something about telling Percy before they slipped out of the exit. I had really expected that would be locked at night.

Percy was out doing a patrol before he grabbed the second-years to lead to astronomy anyway, so I set down my book and followed to see what the kids were up to. I could believe the twins talking Ron into going out at night to do something stupid, but Neville seemed too level-headed for that, and why had Hermione not come back in? I figured it out when I left and the portrait snapped closed, with no fat lady in it to re-admit students. What a bizarre way of locking the room.

The trio of first-years had already headed off. I spotted their little heads flitting through the moonlight as they went downstairs. Shrugging, I followed them down: in for a knut, in for a galleon, I thought the local saying went. They were pathetically easy to keep track of, even with a couple minute head start, and I wondered if they realized how lucky they were that none of the prefects or Filch had caught them. I wasn't the stealthiest person in the universe, either, but I was paying extra attention and was pretty sure I'd hear anyone coming around a corner. I could certainly hear the children hissing at each other to be quiet.

I'd followed them all the way downstairs and then back up to the third floor when I saw the platinum-blond-haired boy, Malfoy, and one of his prepubescent bodyguards sauntering up the other stairway, apparently intending to rendezvous with the Gryffindors. I grinned and slipped around a corner ahead of him, when he passed by, I said, "Lovely night for a stroll, huh?"

The boys froze. I thought the bigger one was going to lose control of his bodily functions, but Malfoy managed to hold onto his poise, turned, and let out a minuscule sigh of relief when he realized I wasn't a prefect or a teacher. "I find the moonlight and silence quite conducive to contemplation," smirked the boy. I was honestly impressed by his vocabulary.

"Bad direction to go, then," I tried to match his smirk, "since there are some loud Gryffindors up ahead that might ruin your meditation."

He tilted his head, offering me a point in the exchange, and suggested, "If I were to say I was on the way to settle a matter of honor between the houses of Malfoy and Longbottom, on behalf of Slytherin and Gryffindor, would you interfere?"

"Depends on the justification," I shrugged.

"After she missed flying class to attend your seminar this afternoon, the Gryffindors in question may have besmirched the honor and talents of Ms. Bulstrode."

"And you didn't say anything similar about Mr. Finnegan and Ms. Granger?" I asked.

Another scored point from the 11-year-old, and he admitted, "Honestly, many things were said, and an honor duel is an excellent way to decide the truth of the situation."

I figured the kids didn't know enough spells yet to really hurt each other, though it couldn't hurt for me to be there if I was wrong, so I told him, "Fair enough, I'm actually interested to see how one of these goes." Plus this was a good opportunity to talk to the kid afterward. We'd started ambling in the direction of the trophy room, when I suddenly heard Filch's voice. I motioned for the boys to stay silent and we moved back into an alcove.

Moments later, the trio of Gryffindors tried to silently run out of the far door, crashed into a suit of armor making a cacophonous din, before Ron screamed, "Scarper!" and they tore off away from us, with Filch not far behind. I saw a tiny feline body break off from the chase and saunter over in our direction.

"That cat is going to be a problem," whispered Malfoy.

I grinned and shook my head, bending down and waiting for her to come over. "Evening, Missus," I said, giving her a few ear scritches. She butted my knee with her head, gave a look at the two Slytherin boys as if daring them to do something, and then turned to bound off after Filch. "Well, looks like that honor duel at midnight didn't work out. Can I walk you boys back to your common room?"

We periodically heard the sound of the chase proceeding throughout the rest of the third floor as we descended downstairs toward the dungeons, and I figured it was safe to have the conversation I needed to have with Malfoy. "You're not just the Malfoy heir, right? Your mother was a Black?"

"She was," he admitted, dodging the question of whether that made him the Black heir.

"I assume that makes Bellatrix Black your aunt?" None of the professors that had been in the yearbook I found seemed to want to talk about either my mother _or _my godmother, but I'd found some references to Bellatrix's sister, Narcissa, who looked a lot like Draco Malfoy's mother from when I'd seen them at the train station.

"Bellatrix Lestrange, after her marriage," he said, hiding some kind of twitch at the mention of her name. "However, yes."

"I assume you don't get to see her very often?"

"She's one of the most wanted criminals in Britain, so I can't imagine I'd ever have seen her," hedged the boy, but there was a hollowness to his polished language that hadn't been there before.

"She's a scary lady," I said. He just nodded, swallowing hard. "Did you know that she's my godmother?" Another nod. "Apparently she was best friends with my mother, but nobody that was at school with them wants to tell me anything about it. And your aunt was never very forthcoming, at least in any way that made much sense."

"I'd imagine most of the adults around here are reticent to talk about anyone who fought on the other side in the war," he said. "I could owl my parents, if you'd like. They might have more information."

"That would be a big help, thanks," I told him. We were about to descend into the first level of the dungeons, when a prefect turned a corner up ahead and I'd been talking too much to have a chance of hearing. To my great fortune, it was Penelope. "Good evening, Ms. Clearwater," I said, trying to be nonchalant and hoping that Malfoy's bodyguard didn't give us away, since Malfoy had already put on a mask of innocence.

"I don't think any of you three are supposed to be out and about this late," frowned the Ravenclaw witch.

"Mr. Crabbe and I got turned around leaving the library and might have been wandering all night if Mr. Dresden hadn't helped direct us back to our common room," Draco said, smoothly. I just gave a friendly smile, not wanting to confirm nor deny the boy's glib lie.

She clearly thought about punishment, but then shrugged and said, "Then I guess it's good that you all found each other. Sleep well, you two," she said, dismissing the Slytherins.

"Could you please give me an escort back to _my_ common room, to avoid any other issues?" I asked.

"Suits me," she nodded, "I needed to patrol that way anyway." After we'd walked for a few moments, the astute girl asked, "Do I want to know what was really going on?"

"The common room doors really ought to lock the first-years in overnight," I admitted. "We'll see how agitated Percy is, before I tattle on 11-year-olds from my _own_ house who may have been up to some shenanigans."

That got a laugh. "Honestly, sneaking out to go to the library late at night seems like something _I'd_ have gotten up to, first year."

"Runes lab for me," I said, then added, "but it wasn't even a month ago and, to be fair, nobody had actually told me it wasn't allowed."

"Yeah," she sighed. "I was hoping getting to be a prefect would mean I could get some work done after curfew. It's not like I'm going to go charging off to do, what'd you call it, shenanigans? But it eats up so much time, it's hard to see the perks."

"What _is _your schedule like?" I asked. "I know we mentioned the research project to you, but Percy is dragging his feet about how much time he'd actually have for it with all his other studies and prefect duties."

"Ravenclaws make time for research projects," she grinned. "I'm glad you're trying to talk Percy into it. That boy has always struck me as too practical for his own good."

"You're the opposite?"

"Maybe. I've certainly been accused of retreating into theory. I get much higher marks on my essays than on my spellwork. If we're doing a project, I'd really like to do something like come up with a spell. It's too predictable for me to just write a paper on the theory of something."

"Makes sense to me," I said, realizing that I now had to figure out a good project that might get Percy out of his dead-end aspirations _and_ that included spellcrafting. No pressure. "Ah, there's the common room." Percy was just coming back up the opposite stairway, presumably from dropping the second-years at astronomy class. To head off any jealousy he might feel seeing me walking with Penelope, I said, "Hey Percy, Ms. Clearwater gave me an escort back after I helped some lost first-years. Maybe you two would enjoy patrolling together, this evening?"

I shot him a wink before whispering "pig snout" to the returned fat lady in the portrait and heading in for the night. I'd apparently gotten in just behind the trio of wandering first-years, as I overheard Hermione shout, "We could have all been killed—or worse, expelled! Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to bed."

Ron and Neville were sharing a look of confusion before they saw me walk in and scampered up to their own bedroom.


	23. In the Dumps

It hadn't taken long for the kids to spill their adventure to pretty much the entirety of Gryffindor house. Apparently, they'd bumbled their way into the forbidden, locked corridor trying to hide from Filch, and had almost gotten eaten by the immense cerberus in the room. I suspected the frightened, tiny children were exaggerating about the size of the three-headed dog and how easy it would have been for it to maul them standing just inside the doorway, but it still seemed like there should have been a better lock on the door.

Hermione was oddly fixated on the fact that the dog was standing over a trap door. I'd asked her if she could figure out a better way for Hagrid to clean up the dog's poop, since he couldn't cast vanishing spells, and that had seemed to quiet her down. Still, nothing I had heard about cerberi indicated that they couldn't just be kept in the Forbidden Forest for creatures class, none of the upper-years had mentioned it being in their lessons, and they _were_, famously, guard animals. So despite making fun of the obsession of the three 11-year-olds, I was also a bit curious.

I'd spent a couple of weeks falling into something of a rhythm when the opportunity to go bother Hagrid about it fell into my lap. McGonagall held me back after transfiguration class on Wednesday afternoon and began, "Mr. Dresden, while your comprehension of the material is clearly sufficient based on your classroom work, I, and a few of your other teachers, have noticed that your essays are of a remarkably lower standard."

"Finding it hard to get the hang of using quills, ma'am," I suggested.

She scoffed, "And if it was only your atrocious penmanship that was in question, that would be another issue. Instead, I'm referring to how you seem adept at producing exactly the bare minimum number of inches specified, while filling your work with sentences full of adjectives, subordinate clauses, and elaborate description, but little to actually prove you're spending time researching the subject."

She stared at me, as if trying to prompt another justification, but since she hadn't actually asked a question, I let her hang with what was hopefully a nonchalant but respectful expression on my face.

"Very well," she relented, "if that's the way it's to be, I suspect bad letter grades won't have much meaning to you and that taking points won't matter to you either. Since Mr. Filch and Mr. Hagrid asked me specifically to assign you to them should you suffer a detention, a detention it will be. Please do strive to think about this punishment the next time you have the urge to work so far below your level to speed up your homework."

"Yes, ma'am," I said, trying to look contrite but probably just doing a very bad job of hiding my grin.

The detention wound up being scheduled that Saturday morning, and I met the caretaker and grounds keeper outside, bundled for an already frigid fall morning. "Ready for your detention, Dresden?" Filch smirked.

"Guys, if you wanted my help with something, you could have just asked," I said, absently petting Mrs. Norris, who didn't seem to be any happier to be out in the cold than I was.

"Figured ye'd get a detention sooner or later," shrugged Hagrid, "an' we could kill two birds." Behind him sat his massive wolfhound, Fang, slapping the ground loudly with his tail while giving Filch's cat a look that admitted she was in charge, but that he still very much wanted to be friends, if Mrs. Norris would deign to oblige.

"Fair enough. So what's the plan?" I asked.

Filch ran a hand over his coat, as if feeling the vest underneath that I'd made for him. After taking the unexpected stunner from Quirrell, I'd made a point of actually finishing my protective vest, and made a slightly lower-powered copy for Filch, as I'd promised. "You mentioned that materials were the bottleneck for making more items?" I nodded at the hunched old man, since I'd used up most of the extras I'd gotten from my shopping trip, and probably couldn't talk Professor Babbling into letting me go nuts with the school supplies to make anything that caught my fancy. "It so happens that I have a pile of confiscated items that you could maybe use?"

I'd seen Filch's massive list of prohibited items, and heard tales of it growing every time he took distracting magical toys and other prank items off of students. While it was always easier to work with pristine materials, I admitted, "That's a definite possibility. I'd need to see the pile and figure out what's recyclable, but that would be great."

The men nodded, and we started following Hagrid toward the forest. Filch explained, "I used to keep all of this in my office, but it proved to be an attractive nuisance. After those awful Weasley twins figured out how to sneak in and start putting it all back into circulation, I had to find a safer location…"

"He gives 'em to me ta dump in the woods," explained Hagrid, as we walked between the first trees of the forest. "It's a surprisin' big pile."

"Over two decades of hooligans adds up," Filch complained, carefully picking his way through the underbrush, hunched in his ratty old coat with Mrs. Norris curled up on the back of his neck in the coat's hood. "I was glad to get it all out of my office, to be honest. I've so much more space now, and fewer pests getting in, both creature and boy."

"If you'd waited until this year, you could have just put it all in with the cerberus," I joked, trying to steer the conversation.

"Aye, Fluffy's a good boy," revealed Hagrid. "How'd you know about tha' anyway?"

"Albus might've well put a sign on the damn door saying, 'Stupid kids, come explore,'" Filch answered for me. "I'm sure everyone in the school knows about it by now. Pretty sure I chased some hooligans up there a couple weeks ago."

"They could at least put a spell-resistant lock on the door," I added. "The unlocking charm is one of the first things they teach first-years."

Hagrid grumbled, "No budget fer a good enchanted lock. An' I'm sure Dumbledore could cast a lockin' spell tha' the kids couldn't break, but then how'm I ta get in ta feed 'im?"

I thought about it for a bit, and suggested, "They probably should have just said that you were trying to rehabilitate a dangerous magical creature, and that the school wasn't liable if it bit the faces off of out-of-bounds students. A vague threat isn't much of a deterrent for these kids. You wouldn't even have to reveal that it's up there guarding something…"

"How'd ya know about–" began the large groundskeeper.

"Hagrid," Filch interrupted, "Dresden was asking me if I knew anything about his mother. Slightly before my time, but you were here when she was a student. What was that name again?"

I shot Filch a look, and he looked back at me, smug. He had clearly realized as well as I did that Hagrid was about to start spilling secrets if he kept on that subject. So he gave me something else to question him about that he rightly suspected I wanted to know more. "Margaret McGregor. Looks like she left school after taking her OWLs in 1968," I allowed.

"Oh, aye, I remember Maggie. Tall girl, I can see why yer not as small as the other students." Hagrid thought for a few more moments as we skirted some trees and entered a darker part of the woods, the trees blocking out even the bright morning sunlight. "She were always nice ta me, unlike most'a the rest o' Slytherin. Real smart. I wonder if she'd ha' done better in Ravenclaw."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

He thought of how to explain himself, then said, "She just wanted ta know everythin' there was ta know. Didn't like when the professors told her some things were secret fer a reason. Wouldn't stay away from learnin' dark spells. I don' think she wanted to _use _them, mind ye, she just wanted to know. But she 'ad a harder an' harder time seein' eye-ta-eye with the professors, and left as soon as she could without gettin' her wand snapped."

"Where'd she go?"

"I don' rightly know. I know she was best friends with tha' Bellatrix woman, an' that'un were one o' the main Death Eaters. But t'weren't never no news of Maggie fightin' good wizards and witches, an' if yer da' was a muggle, she mustn't've bought inta the whole thing about Blood Purity. So she must've made good choices by the end." I had about a million more questions, but he suddenly said, "Ah, here we are."

There was a natural spot in the rolling ground of the forest here, where a depression had formed in the corner between two large trees. Hagrid had filled that shallow hole with what was probably several wheelbarrows full of miscellaneous wizard-made trinkets. I didn't actually keep up with the cutting edge of magical toys, but based on seeing Filch's list, I could make assumptions about things like fanged frisbees, nose-biting teacups, and ever-bashing boomerangs. Everything else blurred into a sea of handmade detritus.

I knelt down at the edge of the pile and poked at it with my staff. "If the two of you want to help, anything with metal components or that looks like it's held together with fasteners is a good start." I'd pushed aside a frisbee and was reaching to pull out something made of fabric that might be salvageable when I felt the end of the cloth vibrate and a hissing emerge from beneath it. I'd apparently disturbed a nest of something that started to boil out. "Is this going to happen every time I'm in this forest?!" I shouted at Hagrid, scrambling back.

"Doxies! Don't let 'em bite ya!" bellowed Hagrid as the first of the tiny bluish creatures took to the air. Filch was already falling back, Mrs. Norris hissing as she leapt from his back. Fang, surprisingly a huge coward of a dog, was whining and sprinting for cover.

Not wanting to get a swarm of venomous fairy-bugs to the face, I yelled "_Stupefy!_" and then endeavored to get a shield up as I scrambled backward. Even with the staff, my aim wasn't great for tiny, swift-moving creatures, but it was a target-rich environment. A doxy near the back took my stunner to the face and crashed back down into the pile, but that just alerted the rest of them that I was a threat. Fortunately, my shield could keep physical threats at bay, but it wouldn't take them long to crawl around it.

"I told you we should have brought doxycide!" yelled Filch, as Mrs. Norris swatted a couple of doxies out of the air that had gone after the retreating caretaker.

"They don' normally nest outside!" argued Hagrid. "Though, t'was a warm summer, I suppose." He was swatting at the cloud with his hands, the pests not able to compensate for the sheer size of those hands or his surprising speed, so some fell with each sweep.

Magical pests were not something I'd ever really had to deal with, as they tended to congregate at buildings with really dense and ancient magic. Until Hogwarts, I'd never lived in such a place. I wracked my brain as a couple dozen of the ugly, multi-armed fae beat against the shimmering dome of force I held, anchored to my shield bracelet. I gave up and asked, "Don't suppose either of you remember what spells are best against these?"

"My mother swore by the knockback jinx," yelled Filch, already clearing the treeline.

"Right. Here goes." Fortunately, that was within the spectrum of spells my staff could manage. I took in a breath, visualizing the spell spreading wide, timed it, dropped my shield hand as my staff came forward, and yelled, "_Flipendo!_"

A ripple of disturbed air washed out from the end of my staff and spread across the swarm. As it passed over each doxy, they shot away from me like bullets. Quite a few made crunching sounds as they were knocked into the trees or the ground. Those that managed to avoid hitting anything, and the few that had escaped the spell, seemed to realize how dangerous things were for them and fled.

"Well, good job, then. That's sorted," smiled Hagrid. "Fortunately, they've never been able ta bite through my skin." He reached over to where the swarm had come from and brushed items aside to reveal the hole they'd dug beneath the objects. "Don' look like there was a queen, t'least. I should prob'ly put down some poison and bury this when we're done, though."

I just shook my head and walked over to start sorting when Hagrid hadn't been swarmed by another wave of nastiness, and Filch slowly made his way back as well. Maybe it was the adrenaline crash, but as I spent the next several minutes grabbing likely-looking items, I started to feel exhausted. Maybe twenty minutes after the fight, my vision began to blur and I admitted to the two men, "I don't feel so great."

Hagrid grabbed my shoulder out of concern, asking, "Did ya get bit, Harry?"

"I don't think so…" I slurred, then noted that my shielding hand _did _feel a little numb. I held it up and saw a distinctive red bump formed just above my bracelet, where one must have gotten through between dropping the shield and casting the knockback jinx. "Hell's bells," I swore, then lost consciousness.


	24. Personal Projects

I clawed myself to consciousness, having no idea how long I'd been out. Once the deep muscle-ache set in, I wished I'd stayed out for longer. I was back in Pomfrey's Victorian medical wing. It looked like it was getting dark outside, so I'd been out at least a few hours. The technicolor Gandalf sitting on the seat next to my bed smiled as I looked around, "Ah, Mr. Dresden, we thought you'd be waking soon."

"Stupid, awful wildfae," I grumbled, my voice raspy, "Someone needs to give the Veil a tuneup."

"You may still be a bit delirious, my boy," Dumbledore said, seemingly confused.

I shook my head, and tersely explained, "Wizards built up the Veil to keep the Nevernever separate. Too much magic in one spot stretches it out, little things can still slip through. Getting too easy for them to find holes."

"I see. Children's stories. I wasn't aware that Justin Du Morne would have gone in for that kind of thing."

I coughed out a sardonic laugh and looked around, finding a water glass on the bedside table. "Yeah. Children's stories. Just like the Deathly Hallows," I said, taking a drink.

He nodded, glancing away. "I suppose that foolish quest _would _be the kind of thing Justin was interested in. As a young man, he was certainly keen to raid Grindelwald's safehouses looking for secrets and lore. And Gellart was _very _obsessed with those old stories."

"How many wizards die every year when those things get into their old houses and bite someone?"

"Fortunately, doxy venom is only exceptionally dangerous to the infirm, leaving plenty of time to find and treat most others. Not that you should have had to experience such a thing. Minerva has thoroughly chastised Hagrid and Argus for that lapse in housekeeping."

I shrugged, since that was probably fair. Some of the things my godmother had hinted were on the edges of being able to squeeze their way out of the Nevernever would be far more dangerous. Not that I wanted to explain to the Headmaster what my source was, and had been avoiding quite meeting his eyes just in case he went digging. Wizards had erected the Veil around the time of the Hogwarts founders, so it probably still had plenty of time left before things got especially dangerous. Instead, I asked, "Did they at least bring back the stuff we pulled out of the pile?"

"Indeed. I appreciate you thinking of Argus and Hagrid in your extracurricular crafting, though I do wish the three of you would take fewer risks. Both have different reasons for being without magical tools, and haven't responded well to my offers in the past. For whatever reasons of their own pride, they seem more inclined to accept help from a student than handouts from a headmaster."

"Filch is a squib," I guessed, "and doesn't want that rubbed in his face? Meanwhile, Hagrid doesn't want to risk you putting your neck out for him skirting around having his wand snapped?"

"Very astute," twinkled the old man. "I'm quickly coming to the conclusion that we should have offered a study in wandless magic before now. Between those two and the students you're teaching, you're already getting results I could not have envisioned even two months ago. And that's before your personal curiosity. I hear that Mr. Weasley is showing some interest in an extracurricular research project."

I nodded. "The guy's wasted on being some bureaucrat. Penelope Clearwater's interested as well."

His cheek twitched, as if he was intimately aware of the crushes of his students. "Excellent. She also is a bright young witch, whom prejudice might prevent from attaining her goals in life without sufficient experience. Might I suggest a topic?"

"I don't know if either of them will agree to anything, but if I tell them you suggested it, they might be more willing to not over-analyze everything. Percy wants something that will look good to the Unspeakables. Penelope wants something practical, like a spell."

Dumbledore nodded, stroking his beard, but I got the impression that he wasn't _actually _having to think about it. "Are you aware that there currently exists no offense against dementors? The patronus charm provides protection, and can drive them away, but there's no reliable method of offering them serious harm, much less dispatching them."

It took me a moment, since I'd been unconscious most of the day, but I remembered Dumbledore had seen my memories. I said, "And if that line of research _also _happens to turn up any clues on how to injure other shadowy, wraithlike entities…"

"Just so."

"What _did _I fight that night, headmaster?" I asked, hoping to shake loose an answer with directness.

"If we're lucky," he hedged, "Du Morne had invented some new dark ritual that you thwarted, and his research burned with him."

"And if we're _unlucky_?"

He frowned, clearly unhappy to share this with me, but explained, "I cannot account for much of Justin Du Morne's life, nor his alliances, but his tenure at Hogwarts overlapped another power-hungry dark magic user, and they may have become associates. If that dark wizard managed to cling to some form of life past his destruction a decade ago, his allies might have finally begun to move to bring him back. And, despite Du Morne's death, he was not the only one of such allies unaccounted for…"

It made sense, but I asked to be sure. "You think he was trying to offer me up as some kind of a spirit horse for Voldemort? Do you think they'll try again?"

"If we're unlucky." The old man sighed, clearly sad to have shattered whatever illusions of safety I might have had in my life. He glanced up at Pomfrey, who was bustling into the room, "But Poppy has returned, and I think I must take my leave."

He very specifically didn't promise to let me ask more questions later, but I wasn't expecting to give him much of a choice. I just had to decide what else I needed to know.


	25. Sweet Sixteen

I'd built up enough projects that the next few weeks slipped away from me. I kept teaching focus-based magic to the kids once a week and McGonagall agreed to pay me a token amount for the effort, expecting me to want to spend it at the eventual shopping field trip to the nearby wizarding town. It wasn't much, but having a little bit of money was better than none. I felt a twinge of guilt for betraying Filch's trust and selling a few of the more generic toys from the pile to the Weasley twins. They were unlikely to be provably the same ones, weren't too dangerous, and it got me a little more savings and also more allegiance from the twins. I expected to need that friendship eventually.

At least I was helping out Flich on the other side, spending a fair amount of free time in the runes laboratory breaking down the rest of the salvaged items. I had some ideas for what to do with the materials involved, but the problem wasn't just how the materials were already carved up. Enchantment burned the matrix of the magic into the materials. I couldn't just take apart an item and re-use the pieces, but had to render them back into an inert state. For the metals, that meant melting them down. For pieces that wouldn't melt, I was having to research other ways to nullify the magic, and it was slow going.

That wasn't my only reason to spend long weekends in the library. Percy and Penelope—who'd eventually asked us to just call her Penny—liked the idea of the Dumbledore-suggested project, and we'd begun the research as well as an attempt to learn the patronus charm. None of us were really close to getting it to work correctly, though I was perhaps even further behind. I didn't have a focus designed for the spell, and, if I was honest, I was having a hard time coming up with a happy memory to use. My life hadn't exactly been misery, but, especially after the betrayal and deaths of my mentor and girlfriend, even previously pleasant memories were tainted.

When my birthday, which happened to be on Halloween, dawned with no one mentioning it, that didn't lift my mood any. Somehow, my teenaged mind expected it to be as important a date to anyone else as it was to me. But, for those who cared, it was because it marked a decade since the end of the wizarding war.

Most of the kids at school had been too young to really understand, so they either paid lip service to the sacrifices or didn't even pretend to care. I would have been among them, if Dumbledore hadn't warned me that the leader of that faction of magical terrorists was trying to come back and had singled me out.

Arithmancy and runes went by without incident that morning, and I had my class teaching the first-years in the afternoon. I'd started them learning how to use ritual circles to do transfigurations, since I didn't really have any foci that supported the charms they'd learned since the lighting charm. Well, they'd apparently learned the levitation charm that morning, but I wasn't about to hand them my staff to practice that.

Between the intricacies of the lesson and my own funk about my uncelebrated birthday, it took me halfway through the class to ask, "Where's Hermione?"

"Ummm…" Seamus hedged, embarrassed by the question. "Well, she was partnered with Ron in charms this mornin'. She's bein' a swot like usual. Ron was complainin' on the way outta class... an' I may've mentioned how sometimes she was a swot in here." I didn't interrupt, so he eventually continued talking, "An' she wasn't as far away as we thought. She ran past, an' we didn't see her at lunch or in transfiguration, neither."

"Rumor is she's been sobbing in the girls' toilet all day," added Millicent. "The other girls have been joking that she needs to go down to Myrtle's so there's not a sobbing girl in _all _the toilets." It was left unsaid that Millicent probably hadn't participated in the gossip, since it seemed like the two cat-loving girls had an armistice, if not a friendship.

"Why haven't any of the other girls gone and talked to her?" I asked, expecting the answer.

"I don't think she's real close with any o' them in our house," admitted Seamus.

"None of the others either," added Millicent. It was left unsaid that she only felt a _tiny _bit guilty admitting that she and Hermione weren't friends and that she hadn't tried to help.

I finished up class, trying to figure out what to do. I'd have gone to McGonagall, but she had her seventh-year NEWT class the rest of the afternoon. I could go try to track down one of the girl prefects, but I didn't know where they were and didn't exactly trust them to be a big sister to Hermione if they hadn't made an effort already. Ultimately, I couldn't live with _myself _if let a girl spend all day crying in a bathroom without trying to help.

It took me an annoying amount of the last period before dinner to even find her. Hogwarts didn't make sense in the best of times, and I hadn't had a need to map the girls' bathrooms. When I found it, after finally getting one of the girls to tell me (hopefully not assuming I was being a pervert), it just looked like another nondescript classroom door, and had a standard handle with a lock. The key was even sticking out of it (how such a thing had not been stolen by a prankster was an open question).

I knocked at the door with my staff, and when no one said anything I poked my head in. "Hermione, are you in here?" I called, not seeing anyone out and about in the bathroom.

"Go away," her voice came from the last stall, her voice still ragged from crying, "please."

"It's Harry Dresden," I said, not really sure whether I should take that as permission to leave her to work it out on her own. Realizing I needed to do more, I asked, "You sure you don't want to talk about it."

"You'll just think I'm being stupid," moaned the girl.

Well, that definitely sounded less like permission to go to dinner, conscience absolved. "No I won't. I'm going to come in and lock the door so we won't be disturbed, okay?"

There was a hesitation, then she said, "Okay."

I let myself the rest of the way into the bathroom, took the key from the outside of the lock, and locked the door from the inside. I did a little wandless cleaning spell on the floor by the door, just in case, and took a seat, legs crossed and back against the door. "Bad day?"

Echoing slightly through the still-closed stall door, it all came rushing out at once in her hoarse voice, "I was just trying to help them. And I came to Hogwarts and I thought it was going to be different here than at my old school. They told me it was the best school. I thought everyone else would be smart and want to learn and we could learn about magic together! But none of them want to know anything, they're just as bad as the kids at my old school, and," her voice rose into a wail, "none of them want to be my friends either!" She let out a couple of choking sobs, but seemed like she was too cried out to do much more.

I was really going to have to harangue Percy for not doing a better job mentoring this girl. It sounded like she had problems he was perfect to empathize with. I didn't understand nearly as well, but I also didn't have anything better to say, so I just shared, "It's my birthday today. And nobody's said anything to me all day. It's been killing me. And, you know—I just realized—I don't actually think I told anyone when my birthday is. McGonagall might not even know."

That got a coughing laugh from the girl in the stall, and she said, "Happy birthday, Harry."

"Thanks," that gave me a moment to think of what to say to her. "I don't really know what it's like for you. When I was your age, I'd just been taken in by a new foster father. He was teaching me magic, but it was just me for the first little bit. So I didn't have a chance to make friends. When I eventually got–" I didn't really want to say Elaine was my foster sister, since that would be weird given our eventual relationship. "When he took on another student, she and I became friends because we didn't exactly have anyone else to be friends with. But when we went to muggle school classes, we couldn't make friends, because we couldn't tell them about magic.

"And, it turns out, he had basically kidnapped me just before I would have gotten my Hogwarts letter."

"That… that's awful," she admitted.

I went on, "I'm not trying to say that I have it worse than you, or anything." I may have _thought _it, but I wasn't going to _say _it. "I'm just… I'm having a pretty bad day too, and I wanted you to know that you aren't alone, wanting to just hide and wait for it all to blow over."

We didn't talk for a minute, and finally, she let herself out of the stall so she could look at me. She was still carrying her book satchel and her face was red and puffy from crying all day. She realized what I'd done before sitting, whispered, "_scourgify_," with a wand gesture, and took her own seat on the tile across from me. Finally, she asked, "How am I going to make friends? I don't think I can _do_ this for seven years."

I sighed. I'd obviously thought about it, because Percy had the same problems. "Do you want the easy answer or the hard one?"

Despite how smart she was, the girl was a born Gryffindor, and she'd _always _go for extra credit. "The hard answer, please." She tensed up, as if physically preparing for me to lay some harsh truths on her.

Nodding, I asked, "Why do you need to answer _every _question?"

What I'd said barely seemed to make sense to her. "Because I know the answer?" she eventually ventured.

"What if you just waited to see if anyone else knew the answer first, and only raised your hand if you saw nobody else was going to?"

She still didn't seem to get it. "But then… the professors wouldn't know that I know the answer."

"Hermione, _everyone _knows you know the answer. You do extra homework. You give the right answer when called on. You could barely participate for the rest of the year and you'd still be top of your class. What are you _actually _afraid of happening if you give someone else a chance to answer a question?"

She thought about it for a minute, rather than giving me the first answer that came to mind. Finally, she admitted, "I didn't really understand that there was a magical culture. I thought everyone here would be like me: muggleborn. And as soon as I got to school, they started making fun of me. I had to show them that I'm not just some girl that doesn't know anything about magic. Not just some mudblood."

"So you don't want them to act like you're stupid? You want to prove that you're smart?" She nodded to my question, so I asked, "How do you think you treat Ron and Seamus? Do you act like _they're _stupid?"

An instant objection about to drop out of her lips, she caught herself and admitted, "I don't _mean_ to. I just don't understand why they don't get things that are so _easy_."

I shook my head, wondering at how someone could be so smart but miss the obvious. "Hermione, I haven't checked with the professors to be sure, but I'm pretty sure you're a _genius_ at this. Stuff that seems easy to you is _hard _for everyone else. You've been doing this for two months and you seem to understand concepts that took me _years_ to really get, and I'm pretty smart.

"If you just sat quietly in class and only spoke when spoken to, but turned in all your homework and kept doing spells right the first try, all the other first-years would just be intimidated by how smart you are. But when you have to constantly show off in class and act like you're their teacher, they feel like you're making fun of them. They feel like _they're _too dumb to be at the school."

She nodded with appropriate gravity at my pronouncements, but as soon as I finished talking, she grinned and said, "You think I'm a genius?"

"At magic, yes… at understanding how to make friends with your dumb-dumb classmates, no," I smiled and stuck my tongue out at her.

That got a giggle, but she asked, "Then what should I do?"

"I assume that, like you said, even if they're not as smart as you, you don't want to go through seven years just ignoring them and doing your own thing?" She nodded, so I told her basically what I'd told Percy, "Then you've got to try to be interested in whatever weird wizard sports or games they're interested in… and not make them feel like you think they're dumb.

"Which means waiting until they _ask _for your help, and not over-helping." I thought about it for a second, "It probably also helps if there's something they're better at than you that they can do for _you_. How do you feel about being 'Hermione, who's great at magic but terrible on a broom, so we're working really hard to train her up to play quidditch some day'?"

"Ugh, flying," she frowned, then giggled when I made the same face. "Yeah, I guess I can try that. Can I ask you for more help if I think I'm still getting it wrong?"

"Yeah, sure," I said, then smiled and pointed at her, "See! You're already getting it!"

She nodded, "You know, what you said makes a lot of sense in light of an article I was reading in a psychology magazine my parents had in their waiting room, and it was talking about 'reciprocity' and it's starting to make a lot more sense, because–"

I put up a finger to stop her from getting all the way wound up and said, "Can you finish that at dinner? We're missing the Halloween feast."

"Oh, right!" she said. "I didn't actually eat lunch and I guess I _am_ starving."

I levered my gangly limbs up from the floor and unlocked the bathroom door, "Then let's see what kind of strange wizarding foods are at this feast. I mean, it's pumpkin juice with every meal, so at Halloween they'll have to have, what, double-pumpkin juice?"

We were laughing walking toward the great hall when both of us turned up our noses at once at the awful smell of something living that had _never_ bathed. In the quiet, I heard the sound of snuffling, and heavy footsteps coming from up ahead. I grabbed Hermione by the shoulder and pulled both of us to hide behind one of the omnipresent suits of armor nearby. I had my staff ready and my shield bracelet out, and, behind me, Hermione drew her wand.

From around a corner, a creature emerged so straight out of _The Hobbit_ that I expected it to be dragging a sack full of dwarves. The gray-skinned cave troll was taller even than Hagrid, and had to lean over to avoid bashing its head on the high ceiling. As it slowly strolled by, snuffling, it sniffed at a piece of cloth in the hand that wasn't carrying a whole tree trunk as a club. "It can't be," whispered Hermione. I thought she was talking about a monster being in the school, but she said, "I think that's the jumper I lost last month."

The troll definitely seemed to be going more or less straight for the bathroom where she'd spent the whole day, which wouldn't make any sense unless it was tracking her by smell. Fortunately, it hadn't caught the fresher scent from where we were hiding. It was only a matter of time, though, so I waited for it to actually enter the bathroom and then we were going to book it down the hall toward the professors.

Unfortunately for the plan of running away, as soon as it kicked open the door of the bathroom, I heard the unmistakable sounds of Seamus Finnegan shouting, "Oy! That's the girl's toilet!"

Not far behind him was Ron Weasley, who said, "Do you think Hermione's still in there?"

And, finally, Neville yelled, "We have to save her!"

Let it never be said that 11-year-olds aren't _deceptively fast_ when they're on a mission. Before either Hermione or I could say something to stop them, the three boys had sprinted down the hallway and were about to get into a fight with a cave troll that was so big they'd have to stand on each other's shoulders for any of them to look it in the eye.


	26. An Exclusive Club

Motioning Hermione to stay back, I ran out after the boys. Seamus had already yelled, "Oy! Granger! Ya in there?"

That she yelled, "No, I'm back here!" from behind me certainly distracted the boys, and caught the attention of the troll. All four turned down the hall toward us, and Seamus didn't notice as the troll wound up to casually splatter him with the giant slab of wood it was wielding as a club.

Not having much time to think, I yelled, "_Carpe retractum!_" while jerking my staff back like a fishing pole. A beam of light briefly connected the end of the staff and the Irish boy, pulling him rapidly toward me just in time to dodge the beast's swing. It cracked loudly against the stone wall, and large chunks of brick clattered to the floor.

As Seamus's momentum made him baseball slide down the corridor from where I released the spell, Ron and Neville had a little more situational awareness and turned back to the troll, trying to spread out and get out of range of its club. Unfortunately, while the ceiling was too low for an overhead smash, the hallway was a main thoroughfare and just wide enough for multiple children to walk to class at once. That meant the troll had room to swing but we didn't have much room to get around it, and that they were backing up toward me and in the way of anything major I tried to do.

Having a nagging worry, I yelled, "_Stupefy!_" and tossed off a stunner, which would have trouble missing. Unfortunately, as expected, the red light splashed harmlessly off of it. How magic resistant _was _its skin, anyway? With two boys still in the way, I didn't want to risk grabbing my blasting rod and trying to hit its limits. The troll was easily keeping pace with the backpedaling boys, so I tried shouting, "_Ventus!_" and sending a blast of wind along the top of the corridor.

While the wind did more than the stunner, the troll was quite heavy and was only a bit distracted. I had slowed my initial sprint when I had to save Seamus, but I'd still been slowly moving forward, and I finally got ahead of the boys at about the point of another suit of armor eternally guarding the hallway. The two miniature Gryffindors took the opportunity to actually turn and run once they realized I could block it. Now I just had to figure out how I was actually going to block it.

I'm not the most agile human being on the planet, as I have a lot of arm and leg to manage, but the troll heavily telegraphed its swing and I was able to duck and cover my head as its swing instead connected with the suit of armor. All the plates scattered around the hallway, with a couple of chunks painfully bouncing off of one of my ribs. While the club was committed, I scrambled past the troll down the hallway, hoping it didn't realize it could just kick me while its club was going the wrong way.

Successfully turning the troll around, I could see that the four first-years had stopped to watch not far enough down the hallway. "Hey ugly!" I said, trying to get its attention. It tossed a look my way, but took a sniff of the air, threw Hermione's presumed sweater to the other side of the hall, and started to move toward the girl. Annoyed, the scattered suit of armor gave me an idea. "_Oppugno!_" I cast, making the junk, as well as the fragments of shattered wall, swirl up and pelt into the troll.

That at least got its attention, and I hadn't really accounted for how fast it could move when it was annoyed or what I was going to do next. I managed to scramble back fast enough to miss one swing, then another, and even a third, but now the troll was going at a run. I had just enough time to crouch down and put up a shield before the club caught me.

Now, my shield is not a spells-only defense. Through a lot of hard work, it's good against physical impacts as well. Unfortunately, the worst I'd ever really tested it on was magically-accelerated baseballs. It was not quite as effective against the better part of a tree trunk. It popped my shield, and if the backlash hadn't stunned me, being hit by the club would have. Fortunately, I'd slowed it by a lot. Unfortunately, it still had plenty of inertia. Rather than pulping me in place, it worked more like a lacrosse stick, scooping me up and flinging me into the wall. My staff clattered away from me as I slumped to the floor, dazed and worrying about what I'd broken.

I wasn't sure I would be able to do anything in time to stop the backswing from finishing me off, but the brave tiny Gryffindors decided to distract the beast. Three of them were shooting off whatever beginner's hexes they'd learned so far, while Seamus had run up and grabbed some of the detritus of the armor and wall to throw. None of it made any real difference to the troll, but it was reminded there were other threats and turned to face them.

From my stupor on the ground, I tried to collect myself but could only watch the kids fight the looming troll. Ron suddenly had an idea and cast, "_Wingardium leviosa!_" I'd find out later that Hermione was very impressed that he got it right, since it had apparently been the lesson he'd blown earlier that started the fight between the kids. And he cast it on the club, which I should have thought of. Unfortunately, while that might have worked if the monster had a loose grip, it was more than capable of hanging onto the club against a first-year's spell, though it had to work at it for a moment.

I started to groggily try to get to my staff, but my arms didn't really seem to want to obey my commands. And maybe my eyes were going weird, because I could have sworn Hermione was _charging _at the troll. With a mighty smash it brought down its club on the hallway floor, but the little girl had managed to duck and run between its legs. It seemed inclined to deal with her, but the boys started back up with their assault.

Hermione checked to make sure I was moving, seemed to realize I wasn't going to help in the next few seconds, and picked up my staff. The focus was almost twice her height, but she managed to get a decent grip on it, muttered a couple of incantations to get a feel for the difference to her wand, and planted her feet. As the troll was dangerously close to taking out all three boys with a single hall-wide swing, the muggleborn girl shouted, "_Wingardium leviosa!_"

My staff was primarily built to handle magic involving motion, and the levitation charm certainly qualified. With that much surface area with which to work, I'd been able to make it more or less idiot-proof, since I'm the biggest idiot I know. And Hermione had been a very attentive student in my class, even though she was perfectly competent with a wand. _Unlike _her wand, whose magical capacity would grow as she did, the staff could focus a lot more of her magic toward that spell, and it was enough to rip the club out of the troll's hands. Awkwardly swinging the staff around in front of her, the club followed her movements, buffeting into the troll repeatedly and then finally making a very solid couple of hits into its face. With a grunt of confusion, the troll fell, unconscious, to the floor.

I could tell I'd managed to shake most of the cobwebs out of my head because I did _not _say the joke that had come to mind about Hermione grabbing my staff without asking.

Of course, barely ten seconds later, the professors finally came running up, having heard the commotion. McGonagall and Flitwick saw the boys first, and she clearly took in the situation and realized how close five students had been to getting killed. Fear for her charges turned into anger, and she started lighting into the boys, who were apparently supposed to be in their dormitory.

"Excuse me? Professor?" Hermione interrupted, having dropped my staff and started wringing her hands at the worry she was going to get in trouble. She sounded a little tired from focusing so much of her magic at once, but still managed a classic run-on sentence, explaining, "Only Harry's hurt and probably needs to get to the hospital wing, because he was escorting me down to dinner late when the boys came to warn us about the troll and unfortunately, it found us all first."

I could see the boys perk up that Hermione had _not _turned them in for rushing at a troll that wasn't actually threatening us at all. McGonagall hadn't seemed to realize that I wasn't just sitting down to relax, turned white, and ran over. "Can you move, Harry?" she asked. I chuckled that she was worried enough to use my first name.

"I think I'll be okay," I insisted, possibly a little slurred. "Should've put cushioning charms on the walls," I mumbled, mostly to myself, thinking about how I could have done better.

"Did you defeat the troll?" she asked.

She sounded so impressed, I hated to disabuse her, but I couldn't steal the credit. "Just distracted it. Hermione got it." I looked over to Flitwick and told him, "Didn't they just learn the levitation charm today, professor? Hermione and Ron both did it perfectly."

McGonagall was going to levitate me to the hospital wing, but I grabbed my staff and insisted on limping there with her as my escort. We left the kids giving an edited version of the story as Flitwick wanted to hear details before awarding points. The boys were already embellishing it in excited voices. All McGonagall said on the way to the hospital wing was scoffing, "Gryffindors."

I could tell there was tremendous pride hidden in her complaint.


	27. Cheering Section

While I hadn't actually _enjoyed _spending so much of my birthday in the hospital wing, at least I wasn't in there for too long. A few healing spells and a night of observation, and I'd been hobbling around the castle in time to get most of my weekend. I'd used a fair amount of it to look up tactics for fighting magic-resistant creatures. While it had all worked out, I didn't really want to make getting saved by 11-year-olds a habit.

Between our talk and the fight, though, Hermione had made a lot of progress over the week. She'd seemed to be fitting in much better at meals and in the common room, she and Seamus had gotten along in my foci class on the next Thursday, and as we all gathered in the quidditch stands the next Saturday, I saw her crunched in with all the other first-years. She was sitting next to two of her roommates, and I overheard one telling her, "Really, your hair has amazing _body_, you just need to get it under control." She gestured at some magazine she was holding, "Have you heard about Sleekeazy?" I could barely tell Hermione was using all her willpower not to tell them it was stupid, and instead let them tell her all about whatever it was they wanted to do for her.

Meanwhile, I was further up the stands, where Percy had claimed the edge closest to the Ravenclaw contingent so Penny could sit with us and still support her house. That we were all hunched over books rather than paying much attention to the match hopefully didn't matter to the sports fans.

"I still think the patronus charm, while a useful spell to know, is the wrong direction for the project," asserted Percy.

"It's not that I disagree," explained the blonde Ravenclaw, "but until we understand it enough to cast it, we can't totally rule out that it might have some use. Of course, going practical it would also help to have a dementor to practice on…"

"I'll leave that to you two," I grumbled, opposite Penny with Percy in the middle. "I've had enough of them to last me for a while."

The two of them both looked about to argue, then remembered why I'd have a problem and held their tongues. After a minute, my roommate suggested, "We should reexamine our assumptions. We were not presented the task of a better way to deal with dementors, but a more general-purpose spell that can harm incorporeal, hostile spirits."

"And we _do _have Peeves to practice on," grinned Penny. "You're not wrong that a patronus is probably a dead end. As I understand it, it works due to their feeding habits, not their physical state. Though I really want to learn it for the bonus points on the OWLs. We need something that–"

She was cut off by the roar of the crowd as Amber Noel scored her first goal for Gryffindor. The head girl had agreed to play for the team as long as she didn't have to come to many practices, which Oliver had grudgingly agreed to when his other options were so limited. The second-year, Bell, had been assigned seeker when no one else was any good at it. My other roommate had been complaining about his difficulties for the last week as the match got closer and closer. I'd tried to nod appropriately sympathetically, but I thought the guy was still taking this _way _too seriously.

I passed my project partners the book I'd found as the cheering died down, and when Penny didn't seem to need to continue her thought, said, "I've been looking into ways to fight magic-resistant creatures…"

"To be ready for the next troll?" Percy asked, quirking an eyebrow in the closest he usually came to showing he was trying to make a joke. It was progress, at least. He hadn't really processed well that he'd lost control of so many of the first-years, including his brother, and it had come so close to tragedy. I'd had to stop him twice from chewing Ron out about it. I was working on getting him to tell the boy he was impressed by his bravery, but to get an adult the next time. For such a big and loving family, the Weasleys seemed determined to be mad at each other as much as possible.

"Pretty much," I agreed. "You're _sure _it's unusual to encounter horrible monsters in the castle instead of just out in the forest?" Hermione seemed to have forgotten that the troll had her sweater and was making a beeline for her, but I hadn't. _Maybe _it just found it discarded somewhere, but I thought it was more likely that someone had brought it into the castle and put it on the scent. But who would even _want_ to murder a first-year with no political connections?

Nobody took me up on my barb, but after a moment of flipping through the book, Penny suggested, "That's a thought. Maybe we can look at the concepts of magic resistance and incorporeality in general."

Picking up on what she was saying, Percy excitedly added, "Brilliant! What is it about troll skin that causes it to resist magic? Why does magic energy have such a hard time making contact with a spectral form?"

Loud booing suddenly rocked our side of the stands followed by cheering from the other as the twins' friend Lee announced, "And Flint with a blatant foul of Spinnet to take the quaffle and score a goal. But Madam Hooch didn't see it so it doesn't count, I guess."

With the Slytherin stands cheering, I looked over and noticed Draco Malfoy sitting between his parents, who I'd seen before at the train. They seemed to be looking my way, and Draco talked and gestured toward me as their stands settled down. Maybe what I'd noticed was that I was being talked about. I made eye contact across the pitch and waved at the family. I'd kind of meant it sarcastically, in a "it's not polite to talk about people" way, but Draco waved back and his father nodded.

The game eventually ended close on goals but the Slytherin's much older seeker outracing Bell on her first attempt at the job. I still couldn't figure out why an entire sport hinged so much on one team member, but I was still making appropriately-consoling noises to Oliver the next morning at breakfast when a large and important-looking owl dropped off a fancy-looking letter for me.

_Mr. Dresden,_

_My son suggested I might have some information you'd be interested in. I have my own curiosity about you, and would be pleased to invite you to a lunch conversation at your next Hogsmeade weekend. Noon at the Three Broomsticks?_

_Lucius Malfoy_

Oliver, who I'd _thought _was distracted by his latest recounting of Flint's unpunished foul was instead reading over my shoulder. "Be careful with that one," he said, a little too loudly, "the Malfoys are too rich and too dangerous."

I shrugged, "I mentioned to Draco that my mother was in his house, and he thought his parents might be able to tell me something about her."

Percy, tagged into the conversation by Oliver's sharing it with everyone nearby, leaned across the table to read the letter upside-down. Still not having given up his head for politics, he argued, "Malfoy is a powerful patron, if one is willing to to 'play quidditch' as they say." Of course, the Weasley prefect made air quotes with his fingers. "He has the ear of the minister and the school board, and those are just what everyone knows about."

"And he was a death eater," Oliver added, matter-of-factly.

The redhead looked about to argue, but then nodded to concede the point. "_Legally_, he was found to have been under the imperius curse. But admittedly, his voice is prominent one for the purebloods and my father believes he bought his way out of scrutiny." He paused to fix me with a glare, "Yet, a wealthy patron is sometimes worth a bit of moral equivocation for those without abundant means."

"Basically Nazis, though, right?" butted in Denbright, one of the sixth-year boys sitting nearby. I assumed he wasn't a pureblood himself. It was interesting to see that most of the nearby purebloods didn't seem to even know what a Nazi was.

Percy, at least, seemed to get it, because he admitted, "I _do _find it interesting that he has an interest in a half-blood. Again, according to my father, he has called my family blood traitors. I _thought _he tried to associate only with other politically-aligned purebloods."

"More reason to find out why he's so willing to talk to me," I argued. I wasn't exactly going to explain that my godmother was his sister-in-law, and that probably went a long way.

"Just be careful," suggested Oliver. "We'll set up in the inn ourselves, so we can help if you get into trouble."

While I was worried that brash friends that were waiting to start an argument were more likely to _get _me into trouble, I appreciated the sentiment. "Sounds good to me." Deliberately changing the subject, I asked, "Now explain to me again why the scores didn't pull apart like they were supposed to before the snitch showed up…"


	28. Blood Politics

"Did you know the muggle government of Britain employs over a hundred thousand officers of the law?" I wasn't sure I'd precisely _invited_ the platinum-blond-haired man onto this topic, but he obviously enjoyed it. "About the same again in the military. Their population is approximately a thousand times ours, so if we needed policing in the same numbers we'd need over 100 aurors. Perhaps 200 if you consider them our army as well…"

He paused to take a sip of his wine, waiting for me to prompt him. "I'm guessing there are significantly fewer?" I said, just to keep this from drawing out.

"Indeed. Only a tad over fifty, at last count, with a few retirees that can be called in for emergencies." Lucius Malfoy clearly thought this was a slam dunk condemnation of something.

I thought about it from his point of view, as someone very involved in the ministry. But I also knew that the majority of wizards tried to stay out of the way of the ministry. "What about crimes against muggles that go unreported? Maybe wizarding criminals are just picking easier targets. It's not like muggle criminals have a whole giant population of their own outsiders to steal from."

A slight glimmer in his eyes like I'd caught the man out, then he turned it back to his own purposes. "And yet, with this whole population of opportunity, so many muggleborn turn their attention to trying to make changes to the wizarding world."

"It might have something to do with having to spend at least five years of their lives immersed in wizarding culture or they'll have their magic bound," I argued. "Also, that aurors can show up from nowhere at any time and throw them in prison. I suspect most muggleborn would be happy to ignore the wizarding world if it would ignore them." I wasn't exactly getting agitated, but after we'd finished an admittedly nice lunch in a private room, all of which he'd paid for, it seemed like Malfoy had started trying to recruit me or something. Rather than him changing the subject again, I tried to focus on what he'd been getting at, "But, are you saying that you don't have a problem with muggles, you just wish they'd leave you alone?"

"Well put, Mr. Dresden," he allowed. "I'm simply trying to dispel the notions I'm certain are still rife in Gryffindor, and likely Hogwarts in general. The push for blood purity is an important but flawed political shorthand. It's more a question of culture than birth. I understand that you're a powerful young wizard, despite being half-blood, and Draco tells me a muggleborn girl is currently first in his class. The Dark Lord _himself _was a half-blood, and he was killed by a half-blood after being weakened by another very talented muggleborn witch. I breed exotic animals as a hobby, and I wouldn't have much success if I didn't have an understanding of inherited genetics. Clearly, while two magical parents are more likely to breed true, once the recessive magical trait appears in any child, parentage doesn't seem to have much effect on total power.

"Unfortunately, the majority of traditional wizards don't have quite the same understanding of the sciences. They rally around being pureblood, thinking it assures power instead of just being a signifier of a shared cultural heritage. No, the problem with muggleborn and muggle-raised is not the capacity for magic, it's their capacity to understand our culture."

Right. The guy that wouldn't have looked at all out of place in an SS uniform was claiming _he_ wasn't racist, he just found a bunch of racists to be a really useful voting base. Between the years in a Chicago orphanage seeing how my non-white peers were treated and then the not-so-warm welcome certain people in Britain had given me as a half-blood, I wasn't exactly willing to give him much credit for his tap dancing. But he _still _hadn't actually told me anything about my mother, so I managed to not just tell him how full of shit he was. Instead, I asked, "Did my mother fit in? I don't think McGregor is a pureblood family name."

"A half-blood," he allowed, with a slight smirk for me trying to force the conversation to what he'd invited me for. "But that makes my point exactly. She was a year ahead of me in Slytherin, so I had ample opportunity to observe her. Rather than railing against wizarding tradition, as many muggleborn and half-bloods do, she sought to grow within them. I think you will find that the non-purebloods who have problems in our society are precisely the ones that bring in radical muggle ideas and expect our world to accommodate them. Those that decide to embrace their magic and the culture that entails fit in so fully that only tell-tale last names would let a casual observer tell a difference from long-established families."

Someone willing to get along with conservative wizarding values didn't sound like what Hagrid had told me about my mother. "I heard she actually upset several of the professors. Left school early because she was pushy, and wouldn't accept things that were meant to be secret."

"Ah!" Malfoy exclaimed, seemingly genuinely excited by this information. "I'd wondered if anyone in the castle would have explained even that much to you. You see, this is where we come to the crux of the issue. How much do you know about British wizarding politics?" I shrugged that it wasn't much, so he continued, "The headmaster of Hogwarts heads up a political faction that he unironically refers to as 'the Light,' hoping to cast his opponents as representing darkness. It's inarguably a solid strategic move that has had Wizengamot members and voters lining up for years to side with him, even when they haven't looked closely at his policies.

"Your mother was more allied with a different political faction, one of whose tenets is that arbitrarily limiting magic study is terrible for innovation. Margaret didn't oppose wizarding culture, she opposed a philosophy that whole swaths of spells are too dangerous for students to even know about, much less learn to cast. That philosophy is, unfortunately, nearly universal in educational institutions." He paused for a beat, then added, "I suspect it has to do with seeing too many inadequate students and fearing that allowing permissions to the brightest of students would soon have incompetents casting Unforgivables in the hallways."

"I feel like I know both sides of the whole argument about what counts as a 'dark' spell," I countered. Quirrell kept bringing it up, and Justin had certainly had an attitude about it that I'd reevaluated heavily after his betrayal. I remembered how my godmother had been so interested in teaching me something that Dumbledore didn't seem to believe in, and took a guess, "What about the fae?"

With a slight grimace, Lucius admitted, "Yes, while treating with the fair folk is considered a risk even amongst those with our political leanings, we'd never seek to outright forbid it the way the self-proclaimed 'Light' would. Your mother became so invested in it that she was often referred to as 'Margaret LeFay' in a play on the name of the ancient enchantress."

That was at least a piece more information, and I gave him the feeder question he had actually been looking for. "So what you're saying is that my mother was only considered rebellious by Dumbledore's faction, but was asking perfectly reasonable questions from your side's point of view?"

"Indeed. And, to my regret, this is where her family ties _did _prove a limitation for her. Her friends at school who believed similarly had influential parents and other relatives who would intervene if they were treated especially unfairly by the staff, but Margaret had no such buffer in between herself and the disapproval of the staff. In fact, I understand that her magical parent was more aligned with Dumbledore's faction and made life at school unbearable for the girl. Hence, as soon as she could leave without having her magic bound, she did."

"Her magical parent?" I asked. "That would be my grandmother?"

He gave me a predatory look, one that I'd eventually realize meant he hadn't been sure no one had told me who my magical ancestors were. Now he held the ability to connect me to my family. I'd unfortunately just given Lucius Malfoy leverage, and that led him into a seeming non-sequitur. "Mr. Dresden, now that I've explained the two major political ideologies, do you think you fall more on the side of your mother, or of Dumbledore?"

Another thing I realized later was that this was a sales pitch to get me agree to being on his side. I wouldn't have taken him up on it if I'd realized, but my gut response was just, "Honestly, I don't give a damn about British wizarding politics. I'm heading back to America sooner or later. Hopefully sooner."

It was hard to figure out what he thought about that, but he'd probably take neutrality over protesting that I was solidly allied with his opponents. "Fair enough, Mr. Dresden. I so rarely get the opportunity to deal with wizards who have such good reason for being disinterested in politics. I'll think on whether I can provide assistance getting you back to your father's homeland."

He began to stand, so I realized I was being dismissed with only a tiny amount of information about my mother, but at least I got a free lunch out of the deal. I hated politicians. Trying not to sound too annoyed at his bait and switch to trying to recruit me, I managed, "I appreciate the consideration. And thank you for lunch."

"Think nothing of it, Mr. Dresden," he said as he made his way from the room, still seeming to be unsure of how to handle me in the future.


	29. Circles within Circles

"I had not expected him to make a full recruitment pitch right from the start," admitted Percy, after I'd finished summarizing my conversation with Malfoy. Percy, Penny, Oliver, and I were around a table out in the Three Broomsticks' common room. "I wonder why he abandoned his usual tactic of slow patronage to build a dependent relationship first."

Penny suggested, "Maybe he didn't think a few small favors would make much difference to someone who already has a relationship with Dumbledore? Risking the hard sell to lock down your loyalty before you had months more at Hogwarts to find out that his political faction is called 'the Dark' for more than just Dumbledore's faction."

Percy nodded, "Makes sense to me. In particular, Gryffindor that go into politics are almost always on the side of the Light, when it comes to Wizengamot votes. Perhaps he attempted a slow play with some of our housemates before and it never worked."

Oliver hadn't really said much while the two prefects had been helping me work out the political side of the conversation that had mostly gone over my head in the moment. Especially once I'd mentioned my mother's fae connection, he'd quieted up. He finally asked, "The fair folk are real?"

Penny answered, "Well, there are obviously the fairies, pixies, doxies, leprechauns, imps and the like that are covered in defense and magical creatures classes. But I was curious about that, too. I've heard about the fair folk in stories, but we haven't covered them in school."

I considered how to explain, since I'd left out any mention of my godmother to the three, including when summarizing my conversation with Lucius. Finally, I explained, "Like Malfoy mentioned, dealing with the aes sidhe—the people of the mounds, or the fair folk—is strongly discouraged. It was only recently that I figured out that… _one of my tutors_ wasn't supposed to be telling me as much as she did about them.

"As I understand it, wizards basically figured out how to lock them out of our world centuries ago, because they were so dangerous. The tiniest ones, like the fairies, can still slip through. A bunch of magical creatures are actually native to the lands of the fae as well. But there's always a worry that wizards will figure out how to contact the more powerful ones. They really like to make deals that usually wind up being way worse for you than you think. And contacting them in that way might make it possible for them to slip through as well. Or at least they'll trick you into doing something bad for humans as your part of the deal."

"So they don't teach us about them because the fewer people that know, the fewer that can risk letting them back into our world?" asked the Ravenclaw prefect, clearly annoyed. "I can see why your mother didn't agree with that. Security through obscurity never works."

Percy asked, "How sure are you that this is real, and not some folklore your tutor sold you on?"

"If it's fake, it's not just his tutor that believed it," Oliver interjected. "My mother seemed to believe something similar. I thought it was folklore too. But it would make sense. There's even a faerie mound right outside of Hogsmeade she showed me a few times."

"Really?" asked Penny, excited. "Then as proper empiricists, we should go take a look!"

Percy didn't exactly seem sold, but he was never going to pass up a chance to go take a long walk with Penny, so the four of us left the inn and headed in the way Oliver suggested. "If I remember it right, it's a left off the road as soon as you can see the Shrieking Shack."

Oliver's memories proved accurate. We'd only been walking for a minute into the treeline next to the road out of town before we found a clearing with a large mound dominating it. Lifted off the ground by a foot-high ring of stones, the dome was several yards across and covered in oddly-even green grass. A classic fairy ring of mushrooms crowned the hill, poking out of the grass. The whole thing seemed out of place amid the forest that was dipping quickly toward winter. It wasn't even covered with the fallen leaves that blanketed the rest of the wood, and the temperature warmed subtly close to the mound.

"I don't suppose the villagers keep this mowed?" I asked. The points on the grass just seemed to indicate that it grew to a few inches and then stopped, rather than being kept even by groundskeepers. Oliver shook his head and the four of us spread out around the mound, damp fallen leaves squelching under our boots. Through unspoken agreement, no one had gone clambering on the hill yet.

Percy and Penny quickly found old runes carved into the stones and started trying to work out their purpose, while Oliver seemed to be having an almost religious experience. We'd spread out around the hill, as well, so I was the only one that noticed a flicker of motion back toward town, like someone in dark clothing moving behind a tree. I fancied I would have heard the subtle pop of someone apparating away from that hiding place if it weren't for the instantaneous crack of incoming apparition. A dark-robed figure appeared at the top of the hill, centered in the ring of mushrooms.

To his credit, Oliver was in a guard stance almost instantly with his wand out. Percy was distracted by Penny, who shrieked and kicked backwards from where they were stooped over, reading the stones. It was all the bookish Weasley could do to catch her from falling into the leaves. But both of them would have been dead if it had been an enemy appearing.

Admittedly, I had a moment of fight-or-flight before I recognized the feminine silhouette and familiar black hair curling out of the shadowed hood. I'd also seen her wear that cloak before when she was trying to be sneaky. So I either scared or impressed the hell out of my classmates when I just said, "Hello, Godmother."

"Oh, Harry, not even an 'avaunt, hooded shade!' for my troubles?" snarked Bellatrix. "It's classic for situations like this. When your mother first came here, she had better words."

"I guess you'd know, since you were right there with her," I rejoined. "Hogsmeade weekends start third year, right? Did you find it together when you were 13, or did it take you longer?"

"Lucius wouldn't have told you," she whined, her voice pitching into the annoying baby talk she sometimes did. "Could it be… yearbooks?" I gave her a slight nod to admit how she'd been found out. "But you haven't mentioned to your friends… no diagnostic spells!" she shrieked, noticing Penny waving her wand. I was probably the only one that could hear my godmother's hissed, "_Expelliarmus_!" as she wandlessly cast at the Ravenclaw girl.

The wave of disarming magic was impressive, but probably wouldn't have been strong enough had Penny been at all prepared. However, her wand was dragged from her hand with a surprised squeak and flew into Bellatrix's hand.

"Hmm, walnut," my godmother said, examining the wand in her gloved hand. "I knew of another smart girl with such a wand. It's good for Harry to have smart friends." She threw the wand back Penny's way for her to catch. "Turn it on me again and I'll break all your fingers."

Seeing Oliver tensing trying to decide whether that was a prelude to a fight, I tried to get the madwoman to the point she'd followed us out of town to make. "Is there something I can do for you today, godmother?"

"Since you're not trailing Lucius but you're here, I assume he mentioned your mother's interest in the fae but did not secure your allegiance?" I nodded, and she giggled madly. "He fancies himself a better salesman than he is. Let's have a lesson, since you've made the trip, then." Over her shoulder, careful to not reveal her face from within the depths of her hood, she snapped out, "Smart girl! How does magical translocation work?"

"Well…" Penny began, then frowned, "I don't think I've ever seen the theory explained. Maybe they don't teach the theory until they teach us to apparate?"

"You don't find that suspicious?" Bellatrix asked, in a slight sing song. "Harry's mother certainly did. Harry, can _you _work it out?"

I thought I saw where she was going with this. "Does it use the Nevernever somehow? I know the faerie realm doesn't map directly to ours."

"Exactly. Oh, you're a student at Hogwarts now! Ten points to… oh… Gryffindor. I never thought I'd be saying that." The others had started to drop their guard as the cloaked madwoman on the hill seemed to be giving a lesson instead of attacking them. Little did they realize how quickly she could turn a lecture _into_ an attack. But, for now, she continued to explain, "Before they raised the wall between the worlds, wizards would tear gates into the Nevernever and walk the ways within. Much faster than even riding, if you could figure out correspondences between points.

"These old hill forts are called raths, and they were bound with ancient spells to be stable connections between _here_ and _there_. It also made it easier to open a way. They used to be all over, a travel network nearly two millennia before the floo." She turned slowly away from me to take in the others, who were having just the weirdest but most engaging history lesson they'd ever had at Hogwarts. The two prefects were rapt from the lecture, while Oliver still seemed to think she was some faerie creature and not just a dangerously deranged dark witch.

Percy couldn't help but contribute to a classroom discussion, even if the classroom was a faerie mound in the middle of the woods. "The veil! It blocks travel into this other world but retains the magic of these ways?"

Bellatrix giggled, "With the hair it must be a Weasley! Those aren't usually so sharp. Be careful you make sure he only cuts the ones you want him to cut, Harry. But, yes, you've gotten it. They didn't just wall off the Nevernever, they made sure that it could serve as a road as well. Apparition. Portkeys. The Floo. All of it is just tapping into a much bigger spell and letting you use the _ways _without even knowing where they go.

"And if that wall came tumbling down… no more teleporting witches and wizards." That pronouncement was threatening enough that it stopped several questions that Percy and Penny were clearly winding up to ask. She finally stopped her slow turning to fix me with a very pointed stare, "But, until that happens, raths still make an excellent apparition point for going long distances."

And with that last piece of advice, she proved it by apparating away.


	30. Detained

Fortunately, everyone had seemed to accept my explanation that my godmother was a crazy and powerful witch who'd apparently been friends with my mother, and that her "lessons" were often hard to follow and painful. All of this was true, but what I'd danced around was that I knew who she was. Percy, at the very least, would probably feel obligated to report that he'd spotted Bellatrix Lestrange. I wasn't ready to get caught in between whatever agenda she had and Dumbledore.

Plus her continued patronage was dangerous but likely necessary. I became especially convinced of this by the second weekend of December, when McGonagall had posted a sign-up sheet in the Gryffindor common room. It was a list to fill in for everyone staying at Hogwarts over the winter break. I'd planned on just ignoring it and seeing if they'd let me get on the train to London. She caught my eye across the common room and I wandered over. "Mr. Dresden, I've gone ahead and added your name to the sheet," she explained.

"Why?" I asked, not thinking of anything else to say, then covering with, "I was planning to visit with friends over the break." I actually wasn't, not having anyone I trusted to let me out to accomplish what I needed to, but it seemed like a vague enough excuse.

"I'm sorry, but with a certain individual's interest in following you when you're outside of Hogwarts," she said, hopefully meaning Dawlish rather than my godmother, "it wouldn't be safe for you to stay with most families. The Weasleys might be fine, but their boys are staying here as well."

"So I'm basically a prisoner _here_?" I said. It wasn't a whine. I certainly wasn't a 16-year-old reacting badly to being shut down by an authority figure.

"Take it as you will, Mr. Dresden," she shrugged. "There are certainly worse places to be a prisoner."

"And this summer?" I asked, wondering if I was just trapped here until I turned 17.

"Albus is looking into suitable situations for you. One of us will inform you when that's sorted."

Just like I didn't whine, I certainly didn't walk off in a huff at the injustice of it all.

I _did _have a fallback plan, and since McGonagall and Dumbledore weren't going to even pretend to think about my free will, I wasn't going to regret putting it into action. The rest of the term flew by as I made preparations, and the Sunday night before Christmas, I put them into action.

The first step was waiting to be sure Percy was asleep. I'd taken a long afternoon nap to be ready to stay up all night, so I was in no danger of nodding off while I waited for him to finally sink into a regular, shallow breathing that I could hear across the room. Quietly and slowly, I grabbed my stuff and slipped out of bed. While Percy was becoming less of a narc, just like with knowledge of my godmother's identity there was no way I was trusting him with my plan to sneak out of the castle.

Down in the third-year's dorm, Fred and George had already cleared the middle of the floor and set up a chalk circle surrounded in runes. Sharing the ritual for how to hide the Trace had been the last step to getting total cooperation from the twins. Fortunately, it was neither difficult nor dark. The only component of consequence was demiguise fur, for the invisibility aspect, and it needed hardly any. I'd been able to get enough for at least three castings of the ritual from fluff left over in empty packets of the stuff in the runes workshop.

"Percy went down quick," Fred grinned as I slipped into the room.

"Up bright and early to waste his whole holiday studying," George elaborated.

"And you think you can cover for me?" I asked.

"No problem, Harry," Fred nodded.

George explained with hand gestures, "We have a whole series of things like, 'I just saw him heading that way,' before we have to break out the special effects."

"Unless someone needs you for an emergency, you should be good at least until curfew tomorrow," Fred finished.

"Then let's make this happen," I said, stepping into the circle.

Fred joined me, I put some magic into the working and felt the circle snap closed around us as it filled with the power of the ritual. From the pocket of my transfigured muggle coat, I pulled out one of the small Harry "voodoo dolls" I'd pre-made and held it for a moment at the harmonic center of the magic. The doll was wrapped in twine, and I imagined I was unwrapping the Trace from me as I unwound it from the doll. As I finished, the ends were still attached to the doll, turning it into an amulet.

"I give the thread of my magic to you, for all that spy upon me," I said, handing the necklace to Fred.

"I will stand between you and the watchers," responded Fred, taking it and hanging it around his own neck.

Feeling the magic was fully charged, I used a toe to break the circle and sensed the power wash out. I felt slightly weaker, some of my magic left in the doll to stand in for me against the Trace. As far as the Ministry was concerned, the doll was now me, and Fred's spells would register as mine, while mine didn't register at all.

Unfortunately, the ritual was kind of vague about how long it would last. More time, more magic, and more distance would risk ending the effect early, which is why I'd made extra. But I hoped I wouldn't need to use them.

George quickly cast a cleaning charm to remove the circle, and the three of us slipped down into the common room. He'd pulled out a ratty old sheet of parchment I'd sometimes seen them with and was regarding it carefully. After a minute he said, "Looks safe. Clear between here and the passage if you go now. Good luck, Harry."

"Thanks guys," I said. I _didn't _say, "See you tomorrow," because I didn't want to be a liar.

I made it to the statue of the one-eyed witch the twins had showed me by the defense classroom, gave it a tap and the password, and was about to slide down the hole that opened when a quiet meow stopped me.

"I just have to run some errands, Missus," I told the cat. She cocked her head to the side, then head butted my leg so I would give her some scratches. "I'll see you later," I assured her, but I wasn't sure if she believed me. As I slipped into the claustrophobic secret passage and the statue closed up, I thought I heard her make a sad meow.

Getting outside the school wards was actually a pretty big undertaking in a small, dark tunnel, particularly when I didn't want to waste magic on a light charm. I'd walked this with the twins earlier to make sure it was clear, and I listened as I walked to make sure nothing else was in the tunnel with me. While I tripped a couple of times and hit my head on the low ceiling once, I otherwise reached the end safely.

I felt it when I crossed the Hogwarts wards into Hogsmeade, and I could have just apparated from there, but Bellatrix had made a good point about the rath. So I lurked underneath the trap door at the end of the tunnel for several minutes, listening to make sure the shop above was quiet. Then I carefully opened the passage and slipped into the chocolate shop and out the nearby back door. Fortunately, it was easy to open from the inside.

After dark in late December in north Scotland was obnoxiously cold, damp, and windy. Hopefully no one was watching the outside. In case they were, I tried to move like just someone trying to get across the town, even though my inclination was to creep. In this weather, someone being sneaky would stand out more than someone walking briskly as if trying to get out of the cold.

The moon was not far past full, so there was still enough light for me to find my way to the rath, particularly after spending so long in a pitch black tunnel. I heard a few things moving around in the underbrush of the woods, but even magical beasts would think twice about hunting on a night like this one, so I reached the mound without incident. I half expected Bellatrix to be waiting for me there, but she'd likely just been tagging along with Lucius rather than having any kind of sixth sense about my plans.

When I'd last apparated, I had splinched the hell out of myself, and I was still a little scared of it. But that was probably the worst situation to try it, I'd built my staff so it could help, and, if Bellatrix was to be believed, the rath would give me a huge boost to going long distances safely. Taking in a breath and hoping it wasn't my last, I deliberately determined my destination, turned in place, and disappeared.


	31. Dead Letters

After an eternal moment of being squeezed through an infinitely thin straw, I returned to reality with the sound of my apparition pop echoing back to me in the moonlit twilight. I wasn't exactly sure where I was, other than outside at night, but I wasn't in agonizing pain so I'd probably done something right. A quick going-over seemed to indicate that I hadn't splinched myself this time, and all extremities were present and accounted for.

Immediate worries handled, I realized I was standing on a hill in the middle of a park, kids' swings and see-saws spread out across a play area at the base of the hill. This wasn't exactly where I meant to show up, and the weird way the moonlight hit the hill at a slightly different angle than the rest of the lawn nearby made me figure it was another rath. Downside, I didn't know where I was. Upside, I didn't feel exhausted after hopefully apparating all the way across Britain.

I could see city lights twinkling in all directions, and some on taller buildings in one direction that I hoped was London skyline. Not seeing anyone immediately nearby, I walked down the hill and out of the park into what turned out to be a residential street, row houses with no yards close to either side. It looked vaguely familiar, and was well-lit enough under streetlights, but I couldn't get my bearings.

I'd walked a few blocks in the cold before I hit a corner grocery that was open late, and my very first step was buying a whole case of Coke and some old fashioned non-wizarding snacks. While I was checking out, I asked the guy, "Is there a big post office around here?"

"Yeah, mate, about half a mile down that way," the cashier pointed exactly the direction I'd already walked most of that distance from. "Hang a right just past the train tracks past the park. But it's closed. Be closed this late even t'weren't Sunday."

"Thanks, just checking for tomorrow. Held packages."

"Good luck," he chucked. "Right mess it is, tryin' t' get your Christmas packages in this close to the day. Least the weather's not too bad."

"That's something, at least," I nodded. "Merry Christmas."

"Happy Christmas to you, too, mate. Nice walking stick, by the way."

"Thanks," I told him, hoping it didn't draw too much attention. The rest of my gear was concealable for the most part, but my skills at extension charms weren't quite up to hiding my staff. They did make me a nice little bag of holding, though. I snagged a can of Coke from the case and slid the rest and my snacks into my belt pouch as soon as I was out of sight. The bag was _essential_ for transporting the gear I was picking up, but it was damned useful for carrying ten pounds of cola without getting tired.

After months of having to get by on water, tea, and sometimes trying to stomach _pumpkin juice_, a fresh can of cola was basically _bliss_. If I'd had more muggle money, and more space in my bag, I'd have bought out the whole stock. I wondered if I could safely run duplication spells on soft drinks, or whether it was enough like food that Gamp's laws would stop me.

Enjoying my drink as I retraced my steps down the block, I passed where I'd appeared at the park, walked over a bridge with train tracks below, and shortly hung a right around the graveyard that had been my _planned_ destination. Fair enough. I wondered what would have happened if there hadn't been a rath so close by: would I have been relocated way out of the way?

It probably was for the best that I'd missed, since I noticed some kids hanging out in the graveyard, a boom box going and what sounded like loud pre-Christmas debauchery going on.

Having figured out where I was, it wasn't much more of a hike toward the big mail distribution center I'd found a few months back out exploring with Elaine. If the guy at the desk had been telling me the truth, this was the main post office hub for the whole west of London, including where we'd been staying. Big warehouses loomed out of the night, lit by streetlights to guide shipping trucks to the terminals. A few passed by as I walked, but I was hoping that being late evening on a Sunday would counter being during the Christmas rush. This would have been easier if I could have gotten here any other Sunday in the past few months.

I had pulled the hood of my transfigured jacket low just in case there were cameras and gave a quiet magical shove to get the turnstile gate to let me in even though it was after closing. There were basically no cars in the lot, which was promising, and I went around the building rather than trying the front door. It was actually reasonably warm in the city, especially compared to north Scotland, but a gust of wind as I walked around the long, unadorned building chilled me. Or maybe it was the feeling like I was being followed.

Anxious to get indoors, I tapped the handle of the side door with the oversized skeleton key I'd found in Filch's pile of contraband and whispered, "_Alohomora_." The unlocking charm easily let me inside, and I found myself in a somewhat dingy hallway, the smell of oil, paper, and cigarettes heavy in the air. It was shockingly dark inside, compared to the well-lit parking lot outside. Not wanting to waste magic, I fumbled around and eventually found some switches that turned on lights in the hallway. Carts of half-sorted packages and letters were tucked against the wall, and windows looked out onto sorting floors.

Fortunately, like any good bureaucracy, signs were at every intersection giving a vague idea of what was in each direction, and it didn't take me too long to make it to the dead letter room. I hadn't left Justin's burning house as empty handed as I'd been in Azkaban. Knowing full well that aurors might show up for the blaze, I'd managed to save out a package, put my essentials into it, address it unintelligibly and with insufficient postage, and squeeze it into a postal pickup bin. Assuming the aurors had looked for anything I'd hidden between the house and where they caught me, they'd missed the completely muggle method of hiding it.

I knew they missed it, because if they'd found the skull not even Dumbledore would have been able to get me out of prison.

Looking out over the large room lit only with light from the door and some moonlight leaking in from skylights, I visualized the box, waved my staff, and chanted, "_Accio_ package." I was thrilled when I felt the magic catch and heard a couple other boxes clatter to the floor as mine raced off a shelf to fly into my hands. All stamped up with the process of making its way here, I was glad that it hadn't gotten disposed of. If I'd had to wait until summer to get it, it probably would have been.

Popping open the package, I found it still contained what I expected: a few of Justin's rare books and scrolls I'd snagged for my godmother, a small bag of the keepsakes I had left from my parents, including my mother's amulet, and, wrapped in a few sweatshirts that still smelled faintly of burning house, a bleached-white human skull. I happily pulled the silver amulet over my head, shoved the books, keepsakes, and shirts in my pouch, and said, "Hey, Bob." When the skull in my hands twitched but otherwise did nothing, I said, a bit louder, "Wake up, lazybones."

Points of orange like candle flames appeared in the skull's eye sockets and it stretched its jawbone as if yawning, before saying, "Oh, hey, Harry. How long has it been?"

"Nearly five months, sorry," I told him. "They arrested me, then made me go to Hogwarts. First time I could get away."

He made a sniffing noise. Since he didn't exactly have a sense of smell, I figured that was his cue for using his magic senses on me. "Something weird is going on with your aura."

"My godmother gave me a ritual to put off the Trace temporarily. Had to use it to get down here. One of the jerk aurors is trying to prove I'm a killer," I explained.

"Hmm. It's about used up. Be careful." Bob's flames flickered, as if looking around. "Hmm, post office in the middle of the night, huh? Think you could summon me some reading material?" Bob wasn't really a skull, it was just a housing for a spirit of intellect. For some reason, of all the other things in the universe he could fixate on, his biggest obsession was profoundly weird. "Shouldn't be a big deal for your ritual. You've got juice in the tank for it."

Grumbling, but knowing this was the best way to make him useful for a while, I visualized the kind of thing I was looking for and said, "_Accio_ porn."

Several magazines tastefully wrapped in nondescript brown paper flew out of the dead letter office. I shucked off the wrappers and showed him. "That's the stuff," chuckled the skull, regarding the gentleman's magazines. "So you're in school. We going back there?"

"Wasn't planning on it," I admitted. "Britain seems to have it out for me. Was planning on trying to catch a boat to sneak into France, then see if I can get the American embassy there to ship me back home."

"Shame to pass up the resources of a truly old-school school. Looks like you've been able to pick up new _accoutrements_. I'd love to take a crack at their library. Supposed to be pretty intense," Bob wheedled, then admitted, "But you're the boss, boss."

"And don't you forget it," I grinned, glad to have Bob back. An encyclopedic reservoir of magical knowledge, Justin had gotten him somewhere and he'd been my teacher for most theory. More than that, he'd been my friend and the only one of the people in the house I'd ultimately been able to trust. "Going to be safe in an undetectable extension?"

"No worries," he said, so I slid him and his magazines into my bag, which was still just a football-sized leather pouch despite now having a case of soda, a human skull, and other miscellaneous odds-and-ends inside.

I turned off lights as I retreated through the post office, listened at the door to make sure it was still safe, and made sure the door locked behind me as I exited onto the parking lot. It was getting on toward midnight by this point, but my afternoon nap and the can of Coke were making me feel like I might make it to the English Channel before I felt like sleeping.

My brain fully engaged with planning how I'd make it fifty miles to the coast with minimal magic, I wasn't as cautious exiting the fence around the place as I'd been leaving the building proper. So I was surprised by a half dozen young men lurking in the bushes nearby, the boombox hoisted on one's shoulder but now turned off indicating that they'd been the kids having the party in the graveyard.

"Oy, guv," shouted a pasty but burly boy who was nearly as tall as me, "Let's have the keys to get into the lockup, yeah?"


	32. The Unexpected Downsides of Crime

What I probably should have done was just apparate away. That time of night with that type of eyewitness, nobody would notice. But if Bob was right that I was very close to burning out my ritual to hide the Trace, apparating even a short distance would probably do me in. I needed to have enough juice left in the tank to get out of England, and that might mean magically confounding a passport control person at the very least.

So, like an idiot, I decided I'd try to deal with the problem without magic. And since I was being dumb, I tried out acting dumb, "What?"

"Seen you go in the building, didn't we?" insisted the large leader of the group of punks. They didn't look much older than me, kids without sufficient parental supervision. Much like myself, really. "Bet there's some lovely prezzies in there, to find. So hand over."

Even if I'd been the kind of person to just let a group of wannabe criminals go nuts stealing other peoples' Christmas presents, I honestly didn't want to waste the magic opening back up, and I didn't even have any fake keys to throw them to try to get away while they tried. Next tactic, lying, "I mean, I was just dropping off some sandwiches for my dad and the other night guard, so if you want to knock, they could let you in…"

By this point, the six of them had spread out around me, trying to cut off any means of escape. I had even the biggest one on stride length, but I wasn't exactly in good enough shape to be sure I could beat them at a half mile sprint back to civilization. I really needed to take up running one of these days. The leader scoffed, "Only night guard I ever seen in there is black, guv. Pull the other."

"Adopted?" I shrugged, sizing up the kids around me. At least compared to back home in America, I didn't have to worry much that anyone had a gun, but knives can be just as bad if the wielder is crazy and close. And at least half of them were small and rattish enough that I'd put my money on me in a fight, and that they'd break if I could take down the bigger ones. Unfortunately, that left the bigger ones.

"Only askin' one more time, guv," the leader growled, approaching within ten feet of me. I'd stepped out into the road so I wasn't backed against the fence, and they hadn't managed to totally surround me. But it was coming, and it was time to seize the initiative.

Magic and modern technology don't really mix. I don't know that anyone at Hogwarts understood muggle technology and science enough to give a totally plausible explanation, but the most likely I'd heard was that it did something to screw up how electricity worked. Most muggleborn eventually gave up on modern conveniences, because they'd be fine walking around but doing magic in the house would inevitably blow out their air conditioner or lights.

I, as has been noted, didn't have much in the way of magical finesse, and that meant I was particularly hard on electronics. I quietly hissed, "_Ventus_!" and subtly tilted my staff to cause a distracting chill breeze to roll across the group, with the center of my focus on the second-biggest guy, carrying the boom box. It suddenly wailed with unexpected feedback right into the guy's ear, then popped and started to smoke.

In the moment everyone was distracted by the wind and the haunted portable stereo, I leaped forward and swung. Wizards of the past didn't just carry staves because they had a lot of room for runes, though that was a big factor, but also because they were multiple pounds of solid wood with reach. The leader had gotten close to try to threaten me, but not quite close enough to punch me. That happened to be exactly close enough for me to hit _him_.

My aim was good and I got him solidly in the side of the knee, following through with the under-handed strike to knock his leg out from under him. While the biggest guy was falling onto the pavement and the second-biggest guy was still focused on his fried stereo, I took a step and nailed the third-biggest guy in the stomach with the top of my staff.

And, congratulating myself on the three biggest threats down in three seconds, that was where things stopped going well for me.

It turned out I'd badly underestimated the stick-to-it-iveness of the smaller boys. While I'd fully committed both ends of my staff to striking, the boy furthest to my right had dashed in and kicked me in my own knee. I was moving so it was a glancing blow and didn't floor me nearly as well as the leader, but it hurt like hell. The kid on the far left had palmed a rock, and flung it at me from so close he could hardly miss. Again, I was lucky to be moving so it didn't nail me in my head, but it glanced off my left shoulder and drew a grunt of pain.

The leader had just hit the ground and was dazed, and the guy I'd gotten in the gut was staggering back trying to catch some air, but the boy with the boom box finally got it through his dumb-looking brain that violence was happening, and that his expensive toy was probably now so much trash. So he started swinging it at me.

At least I'd pegged one of the small ones right, since he was hanging back not doing anything until it looked more sure for his side. That left me backpedaling on a hurt knee trying to avoid an oversized rectangle of metal and plastic swinging like my own personal pit and the pendulum and trying to keep a guard up against the kids that had actually hit me. A couple swings with the staff forced back the one who'd kicked me, and I staggered in between him and the guy I'd gut punched to put them in between me and my stereo-wielding assailant.

Suddenly clear of the semi circle and pointed in the direction out, I tried just running, but my newly-injured knee immediately let me know that I wouldn't get far that way. It also apparently looked weak enough to the gang member who'd been hanging back, and he made his own rush in to show how tough he was and took a swing. I managed to bring my staff around in a guard, and he squealed when his knuckles hit oak, but the sudden twist put even more pressure on my knee and it shot little knives of pain up my leg.

I turned and realized the leader and the other kid I'd hit were about to recover and looked pissed, the boom box guy was slowly switching from swinging to charging, and the three little ones were getting ready to flank me again. My surprise was wearing off, and I was about to get the shit kicked out of me. No choice but to risk magic.

Waiting for my moment, I muttered, "_Depulso! Flipendo!_" The banishing charm shoved the boom box hard into its wielder's chest, causing a grunt and another small explosion as all the D batteries inside decided to catch fire. The knockback jinx threw the just-standing leader into the third biggest kid who'd gotten his wind back, both of them going down with a meaty thump. Finally, with a wide, "_Ventus_!" and a double-handed shove downwards with my staff, I called a blast of air straight out from me toward all the kids, blowing the ones still standing off their feet.

The fight appeared to be over and they'd probably play it off as a bunch of really bad luck rather than magic so I wasn't going to have rumors making it back to the aurors. But I also felt like that last spell ripped a blanket of wool off of me that I hadn't realized I'd been wearing, almost certainly signalling the end of my ritual and the return of the Trace. Damnit.

I hobble-ran away from the groaning toughs trying to figure out how I was going to get out of Britain without being able to use magic at all.


	33. Phone a Friend

I'd managed to make it all the way back up the road and into town before my knee totally locked up, and planted myself at a 24-hour hole-in-the-wall Indian restaurant across from the bus depot. They probably weren't thrilled that I looked like I was going to stay all night nursing a coffee, but it wasn't like I was tying up table space other patrons were using. I _was_ hoping the thugs didn't wander this way, but theoretically the cops would be on my side this close to town.

I wasn't sure what I was going to do. I was pretty sure I had enough money for a bus ride down to the coast and a ferry across the channel, but they'd probably want to see my passport. I didn't have one. Justin had brought us here the wizard way and hadn't bothered getting us muggle identification. He'd put off a lot of things that would have made sense for living here for some time, which probably should have been my clue that he didn't exactly expect me to _live_ long.

While I wasn't exactly skilled with mind magic, I was pretty sure I could do enough to convince a security guy that a scrap of blank paper was a legitimate passport long enough to get through. But even without Dawlish being out to get me, even the regular Trace would probably throw up a ton of red flags if it caught you confounding muggles at the border. I could _try_ to get the US embassy in London to ship me home, but the Ministry might have enough ties with the muggle government that I was on a list. Getting deported home was likely to take long enough that information could make it through and I'd find myself getting picked up by aurors long before getting shipped home.

So I needed to run the anti-Trace ritual again. I had the tools to do it, but everyone magical I knew was either back at Hogwarts or I had no idea where they lived while they were home for winter break. Wait. That wasn't entirely true. Hermione had mentioned that her parents were both dentists, and the general area of metro London where they lived.

Borrowing the phone book from the restaurant, I flipped to the businesses section and it didn't take long to find a dentist advertising for doctors Jean and Helen Granger. Then it was another trip through the local listings with the full names to find a home phone number and address. And it was all on the way to the coast, so I wasn't wasting bus fare going the wrong way! Perfect.

The teller at the bus depot across the street was super helpful to an obvious American trying to figure out how to get thirty miles across town, and made me a detailed list of the buses and trains to take, so by dawn I was pulling into the south London suburb, slightly refreshed by a few power naps between switching transits and another couple cans of Coke.

Dentists' offices open very early, and a quick pay phone call in confirmed with the secretary that the Grangers' office _was_ open today, but that scheduling was tight if it wasn't an emergency. I was hoping the parents had gone to work and left Hermione at home for the Monday before Christmas Eve. She was a responsible girl. Surely even at 12 she was trusted to stay at home for the day? Talking her into helping me might be hard enough, I didn't exactly want to answer questions about why a 16-year-old boy was showing up asking their daughter to help him do magic.

After making my way to near the right neighborhood and having a cheap breakfast at a diner, I figured the time was right that the parents would be at work and hopefully Hermione was still at home. I called to make sure. "Hello," said a voice that sounded like the first-year.

"Hermione? It's Harry Dresden."

"Harry! Hi!" she exclaimed, and after a beat realizing what a phone call meant, "You're obviously not at school. What's up?"

"Yeeeaaahhh…" I admitted, drawling it out, "I'm actually kind of nearby and stuck. I was wondering if you could help me out."

"My parents are at work, but I could call them and ask if they can pick you up on break–"

I interrupted, "Actually, I just need your help doing a ritual… to cover up the Trace so I can use magic to get around."

"Oh, hmmm…" I could basically hear the gears turning in her brain. "Did you _sneak_ out of school, Harry?"

"Little bit," I said. "I had to pick up some personal stuff and they weren't willing to let me out for the holidays."

"But if you'd asked Professor McGonagall–"

"Who knows what she would have done? I know you chose to go to school here, but I'm basically stuck and they never seem to care what I want to do," I sighed. "I'm basically an adult, and used to doing stuff on my own, but they're only used to dealing with kids so they don't see it."

She was quiet for a few seconds, and then said, "Okay, I guess. But I want to know what this ritual is. You have the address?"

"Yeah, I can be over in about half an hour."

"See you then," she hung up, not totally sounding convinced that this was a good idea.

I could tell she'd just gotten more wrapped up in her own worries when she let me into her family's big suburban brownstone row house a little while later. The house was nice inside, with an obvious front sitting room full of classy furniture. But as she led me to the back part of the house, it all became a lot more comfortable. She led me into a cozy den that was basically all library, it had so many bookshelves, with her school books clearly set up where she'd been rereading them already over the break. "Something to drink?" she asked, remembering to be a good hostess.

"I'm good, thanks," I said, looking around at the room and pictures. Lots of pictures of her at various ages with her mother and father. "Huh, from Jean and Helen, I assumed you had two moms."

I'd been pronouncing what was evidently her dad's name like the pants, but when she corrected me, it sounded like a French starship captain's name. "He gets that a lot around here. Grandmother is French. It's my middle name, so I pronounce it the girl's way. It's confusing." After I'd been sitting for a second and just nodded, the 12-year-old-going-on-40-years-old asked me, "So what was so important that you sneaked out of school and came to London to get?"

I wasn't actually sure she was ready to know about Bob, though Bob was the main reason I _couldn't_ tell McGonagall about my cache, since he was probably _super_ illegal, especially for a student to have. I could tell her part of the story, "I managed to save the few mementos I had from my parents from the fire, and didn't want the Ministry to steal them or something, including this. It was my mother's." I showed her the silver amulet.

"That's pretty," she said, clearly mollified by keepsakes from my dead parents. "What does it mean?"

"The way it was explained to me, it represents the three aspects of magic: defense, knowledge, and power," I traced the outer triangle, the inner circle, and the bisecting line as I said it. "It's based on an old wizard legend about three treasures that three wizard brothers got from Death. A wand so good no one can kill you in a duel, a stone to contact the spirits in the afterlife, and a cloak that can make you so invisible not even the grim reaper can find you." She seemed surprised about how much wizard history she didn't know. "To me, it basically means that magic is about life."

Maybe it was the good explanation for why I'd left. Maybe it was because we'd slipped back into the role of mentor and student rather than peers. But finally, she said, "Okay. What's the ritual you need to do?"

"It just temporarily confuses the Trace about where I am and what I'm doing. In this case, as far as the Ministry is concerned, as long as you're not casting spells, I'm not casting spells. I already did it with the twins to get down here, but it wore off."

Another moment of conflict about breaking rules, but then the girl shone through that had covered for the boys after the troll, and she said, "Let's do it. But you have to explain it to me as we go."

The house had a walled back patio that would be a good place to write in chalk for easy cleanup but without the neighbors seeing, and we set up back there. It was a little slower going than it had been with the twins (who I'd just shown the entire ritual in advance), but she was clearly learning a lot as I explained each rune and how it worked. By late morning, we'd finally completed it and I felt my magic hidden in the second Harry doll amulet, which Hermione slipped into her sweater.

Having been fully invested in doing the ritual, I hadn't really been listening inside, so I was surprised that when we walked back in, a woman's voice said, "Bunch of cancellations, so I came home early to make lunch. Isn't it a little cold to be reading outside?" Before I could think about bolting, a woman who was clearly Hermione's mother walked into the back room and caught me dead to rights.


	34. Mother May I

Dr. Helen Granger had enough in common with her daughter, bone-structure wise, that it was easy to see the family connection. But her coloration was dark-haired and olive-skinned, such that it seemed likely that she had a Greek ancestry. And I had worries that this would be a situation of a fury unleashed.

Before her mother could, I assumed, start yelling about the much older boy in the house with her pre-teen daughter without parental invitation, Hermione tried, "Harry was in the neighborhood showing me a ritual so I can do magic at home over the breaks."

Somehow, my name triggered recognition in the older woman, and she, after taking in my height, staff, and that everyone was fully dressed, said, "Helen Granger. Pleased to meet you, Harry. We've heard a lot about you." She put out a hand.

Trying not to look too guilty, I shook her hand and said, "Good to meet you. Sorry for coming by unannounced. I had an unexpected magical problem and Hermione was the only one I knew of nearby."

"Something to do with doing magic over the breaks?" asked Dr. Granger, clearly indicating that her daughter came by her intelligence honestly.

Fortunately, my brain informed me that I wasn't going to get away with much of a lie around this woman, and I figured I might as well tell her pretty much what I told her daughter. "I'd stored some family keepsakes that I didn't really trust anyone at school to get, and was running out of time to pick them up. So I kind of had to sneak out of school to come grab them before it was too late." Realizing that I hadn't fully answered her question, I amended, "And the magic that keeps people from noticing me casting spells outside of Hogwarts ran out, so I needed Hermione to help me reset it."

"And she'll be able to use that to practice magic at home?" she quizzed.

"If she can find another witch or wizard to help her, yeah," I considered. "It's slightly advanced magic, but she's basically figured it out already just from watching me do it once."

"Excellent," she grinned. I must have shown surprise about rule-breaking, when she explained, "We've been worried about Hermione being able to keep up with her studies over the summers since McGonagall told us about the Trace and then admitted the established families had ways to get around it. I don't want Hermione falling behind the 'pureblood' children, especially after all the names they've been calling her."

"There's not much chance of that, ma'am," I told her. "Hermione's already way ahead of all the kids in her year, including ones that have known about magic their whole lives."

The girl glowed at the unexpected praise, as did her mother. Helen asked, "Do you need to rush on, or can you stay for lunch?"

Completely nonplussed by not getting the chewing out I was expecting, I shrugged and said, "Close enough now that I can make time. Thanks."

Helen Granger quizzed me and Hermione about Hogwarts as she put together sandwiches for lunch. It turned out that Hermione had been explaining a _lot_ to her parents in letters home. But her mother seemed pleased to have someone else independently verifying what she'd heard. I'd let my guard down by the time she asked, "And you're in some kind of trouble with the Ministry?"

I shot Hermione a look, and she had the decency to blush. But I didn't want them to think of me as a magical criminal or anything, so I gave the vague explanation, "My foster father, who was my mentor, turned out to secretly be a really bad guy. The dark ritual he was trying to do to me went wrong, and I got out but he didn't. Turned out he had some friends on the force that refuse to believe he was bad. I didn't get the impression I'd get a fair trial, before Dumbledore got me into Hogwarts to get me away from those aurors."

She gave me a look as if reading my mind more thoroughly than Dumbledore could, then nodded. "That's really unfortunate. Between what McGonagall explained, Hermione's letters, and reading some of her history books, I'm not too pleased with the picture that forms of magical government. It seems Victorian, at best."

I shrugged, going back to helping set the table, and explained, "Having the first witch in your family going to Hogwarts is probably the worst way to learn about all of it. As far as I know, the vast majority of magical people basically treat the Ministry the way hobbyists treat the main authority for their hobby. They read the magazines, and sometimes show up for certification, but they still have a day job. Hogwarts is the school for _serious enthusiasts_, though." I paused to think of an analogy. "It's like Hermione got sent to a super serious Russian ballet school when nobody else in your family even knew ballet was a thing until she found out she was good at it."

"And small industry politics is even more dysfunctional than national politics," she nodded, getting it. "You should see some of the ridiculousness that happens at dentistry conferences."

At about that point, I heard the front door open, and a man's voice shout, "I'm home!" Dr. Jean Granger came into view, and I found out where Hermione got her coloration. He was pale with her same brown hair, and, as short as he kept it, it basically turned into a white-dude 'fro. He didn't seem surprised to see me, so someone must have called ahead when I wasn't paying attention. "Mr. Dresden, good to meet you."

"Dr. Granger, likewise," I said, taking the man's hand. Again, I was expecting fatherly disapproval or at least a dominance handshake, but it was just as firm as if he was meeting a client in his dental practice.

"Jean, please, or it gets confusing around here," he grinned.

"Then Harry for me," I allowed.

"Fair enough," he smiled, then saw that everything was set up, "Just in time, huh? Glad I didn't hold up the lunch."

Sitting down over the sandwiches, Jean touched on a lot of the same questions Helen had, clearly just as pleased to have additional context for what his daughter had been up to for the past few months. He was also, it turned out, just as good at hitting me with the hard questions after I let me guard down.

"So you and Hermione fought a troll?"

"Stars and stones, Hermione," I nearly choked on my sandwich. "You tell your parents _everything_?"

"Why wouldn't I?" she responded, honestly confused.

"I figured something like that, they'd have you out of Hogwarts like a shot," I admitted.

Helen explained, "We're not thrilled about it, of course. But this kind of danger isn't going to go away, and if we pull her out of school they'll seal her magic and remove our memories of it. So we'll be in just as much danger and won't be able to do anything about it." She took a sip of her water, then further explained, "And even if we wanted to continue her magical education elsewhere, who knows if it's safer? You just told me _your_ previous place of education saw you barely escape from a deadly ritual."

"And they do seem to have a pretty advanced medical system, so I'm not sure what we consider dangerous really _is_," added Jean. I couldn't argue with any of that, and I wasn't sure if I should share my suspicions that the troll was deliberately sent after Hermione. After a moment of thoughtful sandwich eating, he added, "I _am _a little worried about the giant three-headed dog in the building."

Seeing Hermione nodding, I mentioned, "Fluffy's actually not a problem." They all looked at me like I was crazy, so I explained what the house had figured out in the last few weeks of exploration, "There was no chance that most of Gryffindor wasn't going to go check it out after Hermione and her friends got in to see him by accident. And they kept daring each other to get closer, until they figured it out. He seems to be well trained or under some kind of spell to keep him from actually hurting any students. Snarls and snaps a bit, and lies down on the trap door if anyone gets too close, but several of our housemates have even started petting him and bringing him treats."

Hermione was suddenly pissed off, "The twins told all the first years that he was vicious and nearly bit George's ear off! Oooh, I'm going to get them!" Apparently her parents were also fully informed about the twins, and everyone chuckled realizing that Hermione had been pranked. "I wonder if it's actually worth my time to figure out who Nicholas Flamel is."

I wasn't actually very good with British magical history, but I did know enough about major magical innovators, so I just said, "The French alchemist?"

Hermione suddenly got a "eureka!" look and asked, "May I be excused? I need to go look something up!" She raced off to the den as soon as her mother nodded.

With the girl out of the room, her parents glanced at each other as if to confirm that it was a good time, and then Helen said, "Harry, we want to thank you for how much you've done for Hermione."

I waved her off, "She actually wound up having to save _me _from the troll, if she's being modest about it. She's a really smart kid. I'm glad to hear you're not worried about her continuing to learn magic. I think she's going to be great at it."

They once again beamed at the praise of their daughter, but Helen went on, "It's not just that. For the first few weeks of school, she seemed to be having a hard time. The only thing she seemed really excited about most weeks was a little study group some older boy was running that she'd invited herself to. You know her well enough now that you can probably imagine she's always had a hard time making friends." I nodded at that, so she continued, "The last couple of months have been totally different."

Jean picked up the story, "Did you know that she didn't even explain the troll until later in her letter, after Halloween? She started off explaining how she was having a really bad day, and then you came to check on her, talked her out of her funk, and helped her figure out how to make friends. And I honestly can't think of any other 16-year-old boys that would go far out of their way for someone they didn't know _unless_–"

"She's _twelve_!" I said, reflexively, surprised at the intimation. "And, to be honest with you, the girl I _thought _was the love of my life tried to help my mentor do whatever horrible thing he was going to do to me, and probably died with him. That was five months ago. I'm not ready to date anyone, even someone my _own_ age."

"I didn't think so," he smiled. "Seeing you with her, you're like a big brother–"

"Or the cool, young teacher that _gets it_," added Helen with a grin.

"Right. So, like Helen said, thanks for looking out for our daughter. You didn't have to, and nobody else was. It means the world to her. And us."

"A philosopher's stone!" shouted Hermione, racing back into the dining room holding aloft an open history textbook. "I wasn't looking in the right places! It's so obvious! It wasn't safe in Gringotts, so they're protecting it in Hogwarts!"

"Makes sense," I nodded to the excited pre-teen, who beamed at me agreeing with her. Her parents looked confused, so I added, "You know? Alchemists always trying to turn lead into gold and live forever? Flamel actually figured out how to do it." That got a couple of assenting shrugs, as that probably wasn't even in the top ten weirdest things about magic they'd heard lately.

"That may have taken us _months _to figure out without you. Thanks Harry!" Hermione gushed.

"You're welcome. But you would have gotten it faster than that," I demurred. She probably would have figured it out _instantly _if she'd asked a teacher, but I wasn't going to probe in front of her parents why she suddenly didn't trust the staff. It was probably because she realized it was supposed to be a secret and they'd be mad she was looking into it. Not that half the school wasn't desperately curious. But thinking about teachers did remind me I needed to get going. "Well, thanks for lunch and everything," I said, starting to stand.

"It was our pleasure," Helen insisted, as they stood and started walking me to the front door. "You're welcome to come by anytime you're in the neighborhood. But… maybe let us know you're coming next time," she chided with a smile to take the sting out of the rebuke.

I said my goodbyes and left, walking down the street back toward the train station. I wasn't far from the coast, so hopefully I could get there and be out of British territory by sunset. With any luck, within a week I could be back in the States, out of the reach of everyone that was trying to manipulate or imprison me, back in charge of my own destiny…

…struggling to learn what else I could about magic, never having solved any of the mysteries about what was going on here, and leaving kids like Hermione in the lurch when I'd apparently accidentally improved their lives.

I'd only walked a few blocks by the time I'd started having serious doubts about my plan. Was I just running away? Was being a broke orphan with no degree back home really going to make me happy? Had I accidentally made friends even though I hadn't meant to, and could I have a real support network in the kids at school? Was putting up with Hogwarts for at least another ten months until I was considered an adult really going to break me?

Long before I got to the train station, I'd changed my mind. I hoped I wasn't going to regret it, but I spent my traveling money on a few more quality-of-life improvements at the first store I came to, then apparated back to Hogwarts.


	35. Christmas

"How are you so good at this?" I sighed, having been annihilated again at chess by the smallest Weasley. After he'd exhausted his brothers' patience at losing the game, he'd finally talked me into playing a few games with him late in the afternoon on Christmas Eve.

One of the biggest shocks I'd gotten attending Hogwarts was to learn how many pureblood kids took to the primordial control of reality provided by learning magic with exactly the same enthusiasm as muggle students had for algebra or social studies. Ron Weasley was exactly the kind of underachieving jock that would put in precisely the minimum effort to not get kicked from athletic activities. It was maddening, but made a certain kind of sense if you let children grow up so steeped in magic that they were somehow bored by it.

What didn't track was the chess. Jocks might also be good at Nintendo, where their twitch reflexes could shine, and might enjoy board and card games. But getting good at chess was difficult. I wasn't that great at it, honestly, but Ron usually beat everyone I'd seen him play, including kids that _were _good. And that would seemingly mean intelligence, patience, and forethought.

He just shrugged at my question, so I impatiently dove deeper, "I mean, are you actively planning a bunch of moves ahead, or is this just intuitive? Do you memorize old games for gambits?"

"What's intuitive mean?"

"Going with your gut," I explained.

"Oh, no, not usually," he admitted. "We have some old books at home that explain a bunch of gambits. But those mostly only work against people who are also playing gambits. I guess I think three or four moves ahead early on, and can go further when the board's getting clear and there's not much left you can do."

"You know _why _wizard's chess is popular, right?" I tried.

He nodded, and then explained, "It's for, like, battles. Makes you better at strategies for dueling. And quidditch."

I shook my head, remembering that my answer to Justin had been similar, when I was his age. "Three dark wizards kick in the door to the common room, right now. What do you do?"

"Well, if they're coming in from the front, I could–"

I interrupted, "Your brothers are screaming from upstairs, it seems there's one or more of them up there fighting."

"Then I guess I'd try to–"

I kept piling on the problems. "I'm knocked across the room by a spell and pinned down by two of them, but the third one is pointing his wand at you. There are footsteps racing down the stairs and you're not sure if it's a bad guy or your brother."

Frustrated, Ron yelled, "You have to let me finish a sentence!"

"Why?" I asked, probably a little smugly. "An actual fight goes even faster than I was describing it. So does a quidditch game. And there's all kinds of things going on that you can't predict. You don't even know all the things your opponent can do."

He crossed his arms and frowned petulantly, "But it really is for battles!"

I wobbled my hand in a "kind of" gesture, and explained, "Maybe for muggles. A long time ago, when you could stand on a hill and look out and see your groups of guys and their groups of guys, and you knew they basically had to move next to your guys and stab them with a spear, you could kind of abstract it into chess. Even then, generals would get a lot of people killed if they expected they knew all the moves the other side could make. And wizards _never _fought like that."

"What's it for, then?" he let me lead him, but clearly didn't understand why I was being mean to him.

"Say you're making a boil cure potion. You're about to add your porcupine quills but it's looking too green. Can you stir the potion to get it to change to the right color, or should you just put in the quills? If you put in the quills and it starts going purple instead of blue, can you change the number of times you stir it to fix the color now?"

"I… just follow the instructions, and hope it turns out alright," he admitted.

"Why? Potions have rules, just like chess. At each stage, there are ways that it can go wrong because of minor mistakes, poor ingredients, or problems with your heat. And if you learn the counter-moves and think ahead to what you want it to do, you can still have it turn out right." He seemed to maybe be getting it, so I added another example, "You won't be able to take arithmancy for a couple more years, but it can be similar. When you're inventing a new spell, or just doing a complicated ritual, things outside your control can mean it doesn't do what you expected. If you can plan ahead and know the rules, you can still save it. That's why wizards play chess."

"But, I _understand _chess," he complained. "Professor Belby said some stuff like that for potions, too, but it seems like you have to know _so much_. And it's different for each potion."

"Only because the Hogwarts curriculum was invented by maniacs," I grumbled. "They have you jumping from snake fangs to mistletoe to flobberworms. If they'd just stay on potions with similar ingredients, you'd see that the rules are pretty consistent."

"Potions is boring, anyway," Ron shrugged.

"A bunch of people think _chess _is boring," I told him. "Just seems weird to me that you've put in so much effort on that, and don't want to get the good grades that seem like they'd be so easy for you to get by just taking the next step."

"Huh, maybe," he considered. "Want to go again?"

"Only if you agree to work with Hermione on some extra credit potions after the break," I pressed. "Otherwise, you're just wasting your time learning chess." I'd seen a little of how much it had affected Percy to have mostly underachievers in his year, and I figured Hermione would have a better time if she actually had friends that wouldn't try to constantly kneecap her learning.

He sullenly agreed, and I played a few more games with him before having a quick dinner and turning in early, still not totally recovered from my escapades and limited sleep the previous day. It was a small price to pay to maybe help out Hermione in the long run.

I woke to a rustling sound from Percy's bed. "Happy Christmas, Harry," he said, as I woke and noticed the pile of packages at the foot of my own bed.

"You, too, Percy," I said, groggily. "I didn't think I'd gotten any presents."

He explained, "The house elves must have been intercepting the presents for those of us staying in the castle. Dumbledore does like his surprises." He already had a notepad out, cataloging his pile of presents, likely to send proper thank you notes later.

I looked through the tags on my own, and was pleased to see that the people I'd thought to get gifts for had also gotten gifts for me, so nobody would be embarrassed. Percy, Penny, and I had all swapped books, finding various reference tomes on creatures and defense spells. I'd also gotten Oliver a book that looked like a reasonably accurate set of stories of the fae. He'd gotten me candy. Hopefully nobody would be too put out that the books I'd given were duplicated from the Hogwarts library, rather than purchased new. I'd at least replaced the covers with handmade ones and put in the enchanting work to make them permanent conjurations.

I'd spent some effort on Hermione's gift, and was especially happy about it after all the help she and her family had given me over the weekend. I'd used various protective and durability charms on a quill so it would last through use, and subtly worked runes into the shaft so it served as a focus for the levitation charm. It wouldn't work as well as my staff, but she'd hopefully find it interesting. She'd remembered me complaining about my wardrobe and must have told her parents, because her gift to me was a stack of muggle t-shirts.

Hopefully Hagrid liked the present I'd made him, though I might have to teach him how to use it. I'd put the focus light bulb into a lantern housing I'd turned into a shield focus. If he could use it, it would make for a better source of light and protection for his night trips into the forest. For Filch, I'd found a charm that was supposed to enhance the familiar bond, and worked it into a collar and wristband for Mrs. Norris and him.

In return, their packages were the biggest of the lot. Hagrid had provided me a pile of mostly-tanned hides from various beasts, and Filch had clearly gone back to the contraband pit and found more items that would likely provide useful enchanting materials. I'd passed on the last of my stock to the twins in their gifts, and they'd gotten me several vials of interesting ingredients (none of us would point out that they were probably lifted from the school's potions cabinet).

Speaking of the twins, I didn't have a chance to open my final presents before we heard them shouting from down the stairs. Percy and I shared a look, then headed down to find them gathered in the first years' room. "Why all the noise?" Percy asked his brothers.

Percy still had the sweater he'd just finished unwrapping slung over his arm, and rather than answer what they'd been up to, or explain Ron's guilty look, Fred grabbed the sweater and displayed that it matched the hand-knitted ones they were all wearing. Percy's had a letter P knitted into the chest, and Fred and George were, theoretically, currently distinguishable by the letters on their own. "P for prefect! Get it on, Percy, come on, we're all wearing ours."

While the twins struggled to force Percy into his own sweater, I noticed Ron trying to casually hide something in a fabric bundle under his own, maroon-colored sweater. He finally saw me watching, and blanched, glancing toward Percy who currently had his head buried in wool and twins. I grinned and nodded, tacitly agreeing to not rat out whatever contraband he'd received to his prefect brother.

The Weasleys all went down to the common room to have a family morning, which gave me the chance to look at my last three presents, each of them unexpected. The first, I initially thought was a sweater like the Weasleys had gotten, but the floppy package actually revealed a large scarf in some kind of tartan pattern. It wasn't labeled with the sender, but I couldn't detect any enchantments on it so I shrugged and resolved to figure it out later.

A small package included a note:

_Fawkes only rarely provides components for enchanters, but we both thought you would find something worthwhile to create with this._

_Albus Dumbledore_

Within the thin box was a large, red tail feather, presumably from Dumbledore's phoenix. It practically hummed with potential magic, and I immediately started thinking of all the items it would be useful for.

Setting aside the feather, I looked at the last package, clearly a large but thin book, also without a tag. Within was a road atlas for Britain. Confused by the gift, I flipped through and noticed that periodically circles of gold paint had been added to the maps. It took me a while to work it out, but when I found one in the park I'd apparated to the other night, I realized that these must be the locations of raths. There was one near enough to Hermione's house that I would have saved myself some effort if I'd known about it, getting back to Hogwarts.

I probably owed my godmother a present in return, now. Rule number one of the fae is never owe them anything. Even if she wasn't _actually_ a faerie, I didn't feel good about being at a gift imbalance with her. I'd managed to save more of the books from Justin's library than she'd hoped for, so hopefully that would balance the scales, whenever I could actually get them to her.

Christmas lunch was ridiculously extravagant, particularly for fewer than a couple dozen students scattered across the house tables and half the staff. I expected that we'd be seeing most of the hundred roast turkeys as leftovers for at least the rest of the break. I noticed that the twins were being _unusually_ affectionate to their little brother, almost like they were buttering him up.

When we trooped back to the dorms, the boys insisting that they wanted to go play in the snow, I let Percy head up to our room then shouldered the other three into Ron's room and closed the door. "Okay, spill," I told them.

"Might as well show him," Fred told Ron.

"Yeah, if Harry was prefect we'd never get away with anything," George said.

"Fortunately, he knows the benefits of mischief," Fred finished.

Ron nodded and pulled out what I'd assumed was a fabric bag, but he shook it out into a large cloak. Grinning, he swirled it around his shoulders and, as it settled, everything but his head disappeared. I now knew why Ron was the new favorite brother; the things the twins would get up to with this. "Who got you that?" I asked.

They all shrugged and Ron showed me a note:

_An old friend left this in my possession before he died. Unfortunately, he has no heirs, and I think that you may prove to be a worthy keeper. Use it well._

_A Very Happy Christmas to you_

"Harry recognizes the handwriting," whispered Fred.

It was basically identical to the writing from my own note, so of course I did. Not sure whether I should tell them that they'd basically been given permission to sneak around the school, I figured they'd get it out of me eventually, so I exclaimed, "Hell's bells. Why would _Dumbledore _give you an _invisibility cloak_?"


	36. The Mirror

A few days later we were all hanging around the common room in the afternoon when Ron absently mentioned, "I found a mirror that shows the future."

"Oh?" asked Percy, who was sitting across from me by the fire, while we were both reading. The other Weasleys were put out that we'd been regularly snagging the most comfortable armchairs in the room over the holidays, by right of seniority.

Ron had been playing exploding snap with the twins, and probably forgot Percy was in the room, but admitted, "Yeah. In an empty classroom near the library." What he probably wasn't mentioning was that he'd found it sneaking around invisible after curfew. At this point, even Percy had to realize that his three little brothers had barely spent any time in their beds since Christmas morning.

"Well, let's see it," Fred insisted, bored with the magical card game but not bored enough to switch to chess. The magical world really had a very limited number of ways to waste time on a cold December day.

Even Percy seemed to be bored and so we all trooped after Ron down to the fourth floor, where he oriented himself by a particularly tall suit of armor and then led the way through a door into one of the abundant empty classrooms around the school. As he'd explained, a large, ornate mirror dominated a room where all the desks and chairs had been pushed to the walls and covered with cloth tarps.

"You have to stand in front of it like this," Ron said, taking a position immediately before the mirror. "Can you see? I'm head boy and quidditch captain!"

I read the inscription along the top of the mirror, then, quickly figuring out the nonsense was meant to be mirror-writing, read it backwards and laughed at Ron's pronouncement. "Quidditch captain I can see," I admitted, "but you're going to have to put in _way _more effort if you want to be head boy."

Percy didn't seem to have immediately jumped to reading it backward like I did, but explained, "I think this is the Mirror of Erised. I read about it. It reflects your… desire, I think?"

"I show not your face, but your heart's desire," I said, tracing the inscription backward with my finger so the other boys would get it.

The twins guffawed as Ron's face fell. "So it _doesn't _tell the future?"

Percy shrugged, "Like Harry said, if you want to be head boy, you need to put in a lot more effort. But mother will be pleased to learn that your heart's desire is academic excellence."

"Our turn!" sang the twins, in unison, picking up Ron and moving him aside so they could alternate looking into the mirror and whispering to each other what they saw.

"What do you see?" asked Ron.

"Oh, we're also definitely head boy," Fred lied, without even trying to sound honest.

"Both of us. How could they pick between such paragons of excellence?" elaborated George.

"Percy's turn!" Fred insisted, and they shoved him in front of the mirror.

"Youngest Minister ever, right?" George asked.

"Actually, no," Percy admitted. To the shocked looks of his brothers, he explained, "It shows me at the headmaster's desk, nearly as old as Dumbledore, with all kinds of awards for discoveries around me."

The brothers actually nodded at that, and Ron said, "You'd make a good headmaster, Perce."

Seemingly shocked that the twins weren't making fun of him, Percy just stepped aside and said, "Harry?"

Not as thrilled about the idea as the others, I couldn't really excuse myself. Standing in front of the mirror, it wasn't long before figures started to materialize within. To either side of me, my father, as I remembered him from childhood, and my mother as I imagined her from the photos I'd seen of her. Behind us, Justin and Dawlish appeared, and my mother spun around and blasted them away with a series of curses and hexes. My father briefly walked off frame, only to return with Elaine as she'd looked before the betrayal, tears in her eyes as she mouthed what looked like sincere apologies for what she'd done to me.

Wiping away a tear and vowing never to look into this heartbreaking artifact again, I coughed out, "Oh, hey, I'm head boy, too."


	37. Distress Call

"_Flipendo!_" shouted the small redhead, flinging a surprisingly decent knockback jinx at Hagrid.

"_Protego!_" yelled the oversized gamekeeper, interposing the lantern I'd made for him between himself and Ron and managing to erect a shield that stopped the young Weasley's attack. Not that it would have _actually _done much to Hagrid had it hit.

"Excellent job, Ronald," congratulated Percy, who'd been drilling his little brother on the spell.

"You too, Hagrid," I told the big man, who'd really appreciated the gift but had been a little dubious about the value of a shield spell given his natural resistance to magic. After Percy and I had managed a pair of powerful enough stunners to bring him down as a demonstration, he'd admitted that it wouldn't hurt for him to learn other ways to defend himself.

"Us next!" shouted Fred, as the twins had been bored and cold out by Hagrid's hut while watching their brother and the half-giant figure out the spells.

"Fine. Fred, practice shield spells against Ronald. George, see if you can get jinxes past Hagrid's shield," commanded Percy, who'd taken quite happily to organizing the impromptu tutoring.

Surprising everyone, Ron had taken our warnings to heart about how if he actually wanted to be head boy, he'd never make it at the rate he was going. He'd come to us two days after viewing the mirror and asked for help with his classes. At my suggestion, rather than load him down with more book work, we'd been drilling him on some of the practical and fun stuff he should have been learning so far.

Personally, I expected his enthusiasm to wane again when he had to go back to studying magical theory instead of casting jinxes, but I was the wrong person to be throwing stones about that. After her abortive attempt at detention, McGonagall had been growing increasingly frustrated at trying to get me to put in more than a minimal effort on homework for my classes.

The addition of the twins to the practice session immediately made it more chaotic. Fred was sending nonverbal tickling charms at Ron every time he had a moment to drop his shield between knockbacks. George was trying the entire range of the first through third year syllabus of jinxes at Hagrid, trying to get something through. He actually managed a freezing charm that was probably ahead of the curve for his year, and coated Hagrid's legs in ice. The big man easily moved his legs to crack out of the impediment, but nodded at the hit.

This continued for a while, but we'd started after lunch, and it was already entering twilight before we'd started to get tired of dueling. Hogwarts was so far north, the sun set not long past the middle of the afternoon. Percy was clearly about ready to tell everyone to pack it in when, from the shadows of the forest near Hagrid's hut, we heard a woman's voice scream, "Help! Help me!" Something or someone crashed through the underbrush, and the cry for help continued, receding into the forest.

Buoyed by their irrepressible Gryffindor spirit and the recent successes dueling, the twins were off into the woods before Percy could yell at them to stop, and Hagrid yelled, "C'mon, Fang!" before charging off after them, at least remembering to grab his crossbow on the way in.

"Ronald, no!" shouted Percy, as the youngest Weasley boy started to head after the others. "Go back to the castle and get more help!" Dejectedly, Ron nodded and turned to start running back across the grounds.

It had taken me a crucial few moments to gather my foci, or I probably would have been right into the forest with the others. But while I grabbed my staff and walked slowly toward the trees, stowing my blasting rod, I was listening, trying to trace the sounds of the receding damsel, and I heard a second source of crashing underbrush to my left along the treeline, in the opposite direction from where they were running into the forest.

Having seen to Ron and stayed with me walking slowly toward the forest, Percy caught where I was looking at the second noise and we both watched a large silhouette emerge from the trees. "I never heard that there were moose in the Forbidden Forest," he said, confused. "Whatever happened must have scared it?"

"That's no moose," I growled, sadly realizing my _Star Wars_ reference was totally lost on Percy. While the silhouette definitely appeared to be shaped like some form of deer-like quadruped, it didn't move like one. Instead, its hooved legs bent oddly, and it loped with a predator's hunting stance. I glanced along its path and it seemed to be heading directly for the now-undefended 12-year-old. "It's after Ron!"

"Watch out, Ronald!" yelled Percy as we both took off running at the beast. The little redhead was fast on his feet, and already far enough ahead of us that it was unclear if we were close enough to help immediately.

"Ronald! Keep running!" came an uncannily good impression of Percy. The beast's mouth had flapped, impossibly large, as it mimicked the prefect, and it hadn't slowed in the least.

Ron, who didn't realize he was fleeing from a monster, turned to get clarification only to see the beast bearing down on him. "Blimey!" he half-shouted, but didn't seem to be sure he was in danger from what might look like a charging herbivore. But as he tried to move out of the side hoping it would run past, and it turned back toward him, the boy did have the good sense to whip out his wand and yell, "_Flipendo!_"

While it was a surprisingly good and accurate knockback jinx, and I was pleased he'd done it reflexively after only an afternoon's training, it washed over the creature with no noticeable effect. "It's magic resistant!" I huffed, more in case Percy hadn't seen than for Ron's benefit. The boy was about to be trampled or worse and I was still too far to be sure of getting him with a seize and pull charm, so I yelled out my standby, "_Ventus!_" while swinging my staff as I charged forward.

A blast of sideways wind caught Ron and sent him more or less back toward us just as the beast swung its antlers through where he'd been standing. Percy was thankfully quick with a screamed, "_Molliare!_" to set a cushioning charm on the ground where Ron was flying. The small Weasley, tumbling like he was stuck in a clothes dryer, hit the ground with a couple of bounces instead of a thud. He looked like he was trying not to vomit, but was otherwise unhurt.

The beast skidded its hooves into the grass to make a hard turn, reorienting back towards its prey. Finally seeing it head-on and getting closer in our charge, I could tell that its antlers were two different sizes, and crazily shaped, looking like they were edged in vicious serrations. In the failing sunlight, mad eyes twinkled at us as it flipped its mouth back open and yelled in Percy's voice, "Hold still, Ronald! Hold still!" Its mouth was more like a _beak_, sharp-looking bone ridges inside instead of teeth.

Finally feeling like I was close enough, I yelled, "_Carpe retractum!_" and yanked back on my staff. Ron, thankfully, flew back toward us on a thin beam of light, and Percy was ready with another cushioning charm as he bounced to a stop at our feet. We both stopped, flanking Ron and dropping into a guard stance.

Ron started to ask, "What is– erp!" and then _did _vomit behind us after the two unexpected flights through the air.

"_Impedimentia! Immobulus! Locomotor wibbly! Arresto momentum!_" cast Percy in an impressively fast series of attempts to slow or stop the creature that was now charging directly at us, his wand a blur in the air in front of him. All four simply seemed to wash over the creature just like the troll on my birthday.

Rather than waste time asking why he didn't believe me that it was magic resistant, I held my staff in my left hand and drew my blasting rod. "_Bombarda!_" I yelled, pointing at the ground ahead of the charging monster. My exploding charm hit the lawn like a crashing meteor, kicking up a person-sized crater and flinging a hail of sod into its face.

Apparently expecting another spell that would just wash over it, the beast hadn't slowed down, and stumbled, blinded, into the impromptu pit, its antlers planting into the dirt on the far side and nearly flipping before flopping back into the hole, dirt settling around it. Unfortunately, it seemed to only be down for a moment while getting its bearings, only about twenty feet away. From this distance, I could make out the strange mottled black color of its fur and how its face didn't really look like any kind of natural animal. It _was _as big as a moose, though, and that was not ideal for our current proximity.

"Hit it with its club!" suggested Ron as he wiped off his mouth and tried to shake off his dizziness and stand back up.

Percy was clearly about to explain that it didn't have a club, but I'd been thinking along the same lines and had a hunch, so I cut him off with, "Can you transfigure some iron spikes?"

"Out of what?" the prefect asked, reasonably, but did a quick, "_Accio rocks!_" and started trying to make what I'd asked for.

Meanwhile, my lack of wand making me much slower at transfiguration than Percy, I had switched back to my staff and was trying to help with a hissed, "_Oppugno!_" as I tried to get any rocks closer to the beast to fly into it. It worked but didn't do much other than slow it a bit more as it staggered to its feet and gave us a baleful look from its mad eyes.

It had regained all four feet and hunched down for another charge when Percy said, "Ready!" and held out a handful of dark gray, pencil-shaped lengths of transfigured metal.

Hoping it was enough, I told him to, "Throw them up!" and then yelled, "_Depulso!_" as I baseball swung my staff at the improvised missiles. Backed up by my banishing charm, the spikes flew like a shotgun blast into the monster's face.

The thing shrieked in a voice that shifted quickly through a range of pitches, and then cut off as it fell over, barely a couple of yards away from us. We could feel it as it hit the dirt, and oddly bluish blood began running out of its face where the spikes had entered its brain through those hateful eyes.

After a few moments of shocked silence, Ron whispered, "Wicked."

The downside of an immense lawn around a thick-walled castle was that even my exploding charm hadn't been loud enough to draw attention from the inside, so after a brief conference about what to do, the three of us walked back to the castle, our adrenaline crash making us wobbly in the legs.

In all honesty, if Ron had gone to get help, he might have had a hard time being coherent or believable enough to get much, but Percy was a prefect and not prone to exaggeration. So we quickly had McGonagall, Filch, Flitwick, and Kettleburn down to look at the creature and potentially go look for Hagrid and the twins. Fortunately, by the time we were heading back down to where we'd fought, I could make out Hagrid's silhouette and magical lantern coming out of the woods, flanked by the twins and Fang, dragging something huge behind him.

I hadn't had much to do with Professor Kettleburn, who was an older wizard with magical prosthetics for both of his legs and one of his arms. Upon seeing the corpse of the monster he let out a whistle and excitedly said, "A leucrotta! These haven't been in Britain for centuries! Amazing. Shame you couldn't take it alive. Ornery buggers."

"It tried to trick us into splitting up so it could pick off Ron," I explained.

"Oh, yes. Clever predators, these. Children make an excellent meal." Ron looked like he was going to vomit again.

"Oy! There's another one!" shouted Fred, and as Hagrid got closer I could tell that he was dragging a leucrotta of his own. One of the absurdly large crossbow bolts that fit in Hagrid's hand-held ballista protruded from the beast's eye socket.

"I see!" barked Kettleburn. "A mated pair, I'd wager! One tried to draw off the bulk of the group, leaving the others undefended."

As Hagrid dragged his up, a terrible stench came with them, and I could see that, in addition to the quarrel in its eye, their leucrotta's face was covered in something brown. "Did you… hit it in the face with a dungbomb?" I asked the twins.

"Our spells just bounced off and we needed a distraction for Hagrid to shoot it," shrugged George.

"I hated to kill the poor thing," boomed Hagrid, "but it came after the boys an' it wouldn't stop."

"He did ask _very _politely," said Fred.

"Look at the serrations on these antlers, Hagrid!" enthused Kettleburn. "And the pattern on the fur! Even the ones I saw on display weren't nearly this distinctive. These are excellent specimens! I wonder where they came from?"

"Well, until the two of you figure that out," lectured McGonagall, clearly upset at the entire situation, "we'll need to keep students far away from the forest."

I didn't voice my suspicion, because the Hogwarts staff didn't seem to want to believe in what they considered fairy tales. But given how well the iron spikes had worked, I figured these had come from the Nevernever. And that was terrifying, because nothing bigger than doxies was supposed to be able to get out.


	38. Threat Assessment

Bob, my skull-bound assistant, was a powerful magical library that ran on smut, and it took me until a week after school was back in session to find a new source and an opportunity to have a private conversation.

"Harry, these are _nasty_. I love it. Where did you find these?" chattered the skull, happily.

"The school librarian has a huge collection of risque romance novels," I explained. I was half thinking about telling the twins about Bob, because the reasons they _imagined _I'd wanted them to lift a few of the books were probably going to get me in trouble some day.

"Well, she has _excellent _taste." A skull shouldn't be able to leer, and yet. "What are we doing tonight?"

With a bunch of effort drawing runes and circles in chalk, I'd put some silencing and locking charms on the spare classroom I'd set up in, and hoped any school officials would buy that I didn't want my enchanting interrupted rather than that I didn't want anyone to see me talking to an arguably dark artifact. "Working on a transfiguration focus and talking about magic resistant creatures."

"Transfiguration foci are hard," Bob admitted. "It's one of the advantages of a wand. Each transfiguration is so different, it's hard to put in a generic matrix. What do you want to transfigure?"

"Ran into some leucrotta last week, and needed iron spikes to fight them. Wouldn't have been able to do it fast enough without help from one of the other students."

"Leucrotta. Hate those guys. Won't shut up. I see why you want to talk about creatures. I mean, if all you wanted was something to turn out spikes, that _might _be doable. But it would probably be pretty limited about what you could _start _with. Why don't you just carry some spikes?"

I frowned at how limited a focus was going to be for this. "I'd really hoped for something small that would get me a bunch of different offensive materials. Iron for fae, salt for spirits, maybe some lead shot for other things. I don't think I should just stuff my pockets full of that kind of thing while wandering around a school."

"Utility belt!" exclaimed the skull.

"You read _Batman_?" I asked, surprised based on his normal reading material.

"Poison Ivy and Catwoman," he said, as if that explained everything, and maybe it did.

"Anyway, I don't think I could carry a reasonable amount on a bunch of pouches without it being really obvious and heavy. And too many extension charms that close together shouldn't be arithmantically possible…"

"Maybe for normal wizard math," he scoffed. "You just have to make sure you stagger the extra-dimensional direction each one points so they don't overlap, and anchor it all in a very stable material with some failsafes." He looked at my pile of enchanting supplies, including the hides Hagrid had given me for Christmas. "Is that thestral hide over there? That will be perfect."

While it wasn't remotely what I'd come in expecting to do for my next project, Bob was the expert and I couldn't fault his logic. So I spent a while copying out the rune and matrix logic I'd need to enchant a thestral-skin belt to hold way more than it ought to. It was much more elegant than what I'd done on my own with my charmed bag.

Finally approving my draft of the project, Bob asked, "So you fought leucrotta at Hogwarts? Not supposed to be many of those outside of India."

"That's what Hagrid and Kettleburn thought," I admitted. "We had a troll get let into the castle a few months ago, and someone gave it a student's sweater to try to go after her. I don't know if the same person got some leucrotta. It went after one of her friends."

"Can't convince a leucrotta to do anything but be a jerk," Bob disagreed. "Try to ask, compel, or trick one into doing what you want and it will do the opposite just to spite you. They _will_ go after kids and dogs without prompting, though. Think they're delicious."

"I guess someone still could have let them onto the grounds, knowing Ron was going to be the smallest kid around over the break and liked to play outside…" I sounded dubious.

"But you thought to use iron to attack it for a reason," Bob finished.

"The professors did think they looked different than ones you normally see, even in India," I sighed, admitting to my hunch. "Damnit, Bob, it was as big as a moose. Nothing that big is supposed to be able to get out of the Nevernever."

"Veil isn't what it used to be," he mused. "Wizards have been using it as a highway for centuries, and too much space-warping doesn't help it either."

"Says the guy who just taught me to cram a dozen extension charms into one belt," I snarked.

"With the Nevernever footprint this castle has, a utility belt is barely going to register," he disagreed. "Still, it _is_ weird that multiple big things got out. I wonder if anyone's messing with the raths."

"What?" I gulped.

"If you apparate from one of the old 'faerie mounds' you can go further, easier. But it's kind of like a slingshot. You stretch the Veil so much to launch yourself that it can temporarily warp enough that opportunistic beasts can get through."

"That bitch," I said, angry and guilty. "It's my fault. My godmother told me how to do that. Even gave me a map of where to find all the raths in Britain. I used the one at Hogsmeade to get down to London to pick you up."

"Huh. Well, yeah. That would do it." I thought the largely amoral skull was going to leave it at that, but he added, "I wouldn't beat yourself up, though. She can probably do the same thing whenever she wants, so it's not like she tricked you into doing something she couldn't."

"Maybe," I sulked, worried I'd unleashed faerie predators on the school and wondering if Bellatrix had intended for me to do that. I also needed to figure out how to warn Percy, Penny, and Oliver _not _to take advantage of the raths without admitting that I was inadvertently responsible for putting Percy and his brothers in danger.

"Anyway. Once you have pockets full of Kryptonite, is that all you needed to know about magic-resistant creatures?"

"Was that another _Batman_ reference?" I boggled.

"Well, that, and some of the workers at the post office were playing the new Spin Doctors album and I was bored stuck in my box. I know all the lyrics. Want to hear?"

"No thanks," I told him, not totally sure what he was even talking about but sure his singing voice wasn't a talent. "And, actually, I had another question about magic resistance that we've been banging our heads against. What do you know about the vulnerabilities of dementors and other wraiths?"

"Your premise is faulty," he explained. "Dementors aren't wraiths. They're corporeal and soulless. Admittedly, they're basically undead lethifolds with a bunch of other dark magic worked into them, but they're not wraiths. Those are always incorporeal and all they _are_ is souls."

"So it's just a ghost?"

"Not really. Ghosts are more like a shadow of a soul left in the world by your magic. The soul moves on, but if you had unfinished business your magic basically sears an imprint of you into the world. Ghosts can't really change, make long-term plans, or get over what they were like when they died. And they can't possess a body."

I blanched, thinking about the thing that Justin had summoned. "Possess a body?"

"It takes a lot of dark magic and sheer bloody-mindedness to become a wraith, Harry. The mechanisms for making sure mortal souls leave the world when you die are core components of reality. You're wearing your mom's necklace. Think about how one of the most powerful legendary artifacts just lets you _talk _to the departed, and explicitly _can't _bring the dead back to life. People that become wraiths aren't just looking to float around for eternity, they're usually trying to claw their way back into the world. The ones that _don't_ want to steal a new body are scarier than the ones that do. Tolkien knew what he was talking about: there have been things like the Nazgul throughout history and they were _terrible_."

"Is there a way to fight them?"

"Well… actually… remember how I said that dementors _weren't_ wraiths? Let's talk about how the patronus charm works…"

* * *

"Soul magic," I said, dropping an ancient tome on the library table in front of Percy and Penny. It had taken me a few days after Bob had put me on the right track to find a useful reference in the school library. I wasn't about to tell them about the original provider of my information, so I needed a more acceptable source of the details.

"Summoning Angels," Percy read from the title page of the book bound in long-yellowed ivory leather. "Did you find this in the historical fiction section, Harry?"

"Yeah," Penny added, flipping through the ancient vellum pages of the large book, "I've never heard of a witch or wizard who believed in angels and didn't get it from muggle religion."

"Two good reasons for that," I allowed, because I'd had the same questions for Bob. "Whether or not anything about it was true, the wizarding world soured on mainstream religions really hard during the witch hunts. And the angels had stopped showing up long before that because the goetic wizards kept trying to bind them like demons." I gave it a beat. "Yes, there are also demons. Nogtails, grindylows, and some other magic beasts are descended from earthbound ones."

They flipped through the book for a few more minutes, studying for OWLs temporarily forgotten. It was beautifully illustrated, even if the handwritten Middle English text was difficult to parse. Finally, Percy admitted, "This _does_ look authoritative. I need to do more research. So what is this about soul magic?"

I wondered if I should have prepared visual aids, or at least had some paper to draw on, as I started to explain, "According to this book, if an angel wanted to grant favor to a wizard, it could provide an ability to form magic directly from that wizard's soul. It was basically the opposite of demonic bargains to channel energy from the fires of hell. The book's name for it was dumb, so I've been thinking of it as _soulfire_, since it's the opposite of hellfire."

They'd found the page I marked about it, and Penny started to slowly translate the book out loud, "And amongst the powers of these arts came conjurations of great strength, invulnerable wards, and," her voice rose in excitement, "the ability to harm those thought unassailably steeped in darkness."

"That _is_ a better reference than our previous efforts, Percy admitted. "But if angels no longer grant favors to wizards…"

I nodded. "If we could somehow get imbued with soulfire, we wouldn't even need a spell to harm wraiths and dementors, just put it into any other offensive spell. But that's not likely to happen. However," I flipped to the second section I marked, "there is one known spell that uses soul magic."

"Yes! We _were_ on the right track all along!" Penny exclaimed, seeing what was clearly a description of a prototype of the patronus charm.

"So the patronus uses energy from your soul, not just happy thoughts?" Percy asked, then clearly thought of something. "That would actually explain why dark wizards have a hard time casting it, even if they have something to be very happy about. Dark magic is supposed to be damaging to the caster's soul."

I nodded, frowning. "What Quirrell left out in his lesson about Unforgivables is that using magic to kill, compel, and cause pain can cause wounds and fractures in your soul. Even killing or torturing someone with non-dark spells, like the fire-making charm, can cause problems. The Unforgivables are so focused on what they do it makes it worse."

I lapsed into musing about how wounded my soul must be having used a dark spell to kill Justin, even if I hadn't meant to. That gave them time to think it through for a couple more minutes before Penny spoke up. "We're on the right track, but the patronus just creates a protector. It's more like what the book said about making strong conjurations and wards. It's not meant to be offensive. At best, I've heard a strong patronus can shove a dementor around. I don't know if it's enough to come up with an offensive spell."

"That's where I'm stuck too," I admitted.

Percy was looking a little inspired, though. "Hellfire is the opposite of soulfire, right? I recall a book suggesting that the earliest dark magic was taught by demons. What if dark curses are based on demonic magic the same way the patronus is based on soul magic?"

"That's brilliant, Percy!" exclaimed the Ravenclaw prefect, not noticing that she'd grabbed his arm in excitement and that he'd blushed as red as his hair. "If we could diagram the arithmancy of the patronus and compare it to a dark spell with a similar enough effect, we could see if there are parts that are the instructions for using, well, light instead of darkness. Then replace those parts in an offensive dark spell."

"Fiendfyre," I said, thinking of the bestial fire construct it had summoned, so similar to the protector imago of the patronus.

Percy managed to focus and allowed, "No protective component, but we might not find a protective dark spell, let alone one that is at all similar. The problem is that the spell is highly restricted. Maybe the headmaster will let us into the restricted section if we explain what we want to learn it for…"

"We won't have to go the restricted section," I admitted, "I already know how to cast it."


	39. Drama Club

I needed to charge McGonagall more for all the tutoring I was doing.

With the irrepressibility of youth, Ron didn't seem to be traumatized by nearly getting eaten by a leucrotta. But he did intellectually understand the danger he'd been in, and was keen to keep getting defense tutelage from me and his brother. It didn't help that Quirrell wasn't teaching anyone much, and that wasn't unusual for the defense position. Everyone said it had been cursed, and it had been decades since a professor had lasted more than a year. Pickings were getting slim for talented instructors.

When it became clear that I was teaching Hermione and Seamus to use foci, and I was tutoring Ron in defense, it didn't take long for Neville Longbottom to think that he should be getting the same attention from me as his friends. I wondered when the other first-years would want special treatment from me.

His parents were aurors, so Neville planned to get dueling tutelage at home during holidays, though was happy to show up to Ron's sessions when Ron wanted a dueling partner that wasn't years ahead of him. Similarly, Neville didn't lack the finesse that kept me and Seamus from using wands effectively, so didn't see a particular need to learn to use foci. However, when he found out I was going to be working on some enchanting projects, he was immediately interested, for the opposite reason I was.

My magical power was way ahead of my control. Slower magic, like rituals and enchanting, gave me the opportunity to set up a stable magical construct and then just dump power in without worrying so much about it misfiring. Neville was on the other end of the scale from me as far as power went, and I'd even heard kids that didn't like him call him a squib. He had a hard time putting a lot of power into spells. He thought maybe enchanting would allow him to essentially trickle-charge more powerful effects than he could do in the moment.

Hermione had been, of course, interested in getting her own head start on runes, and the twins had also been surprisingly interested. I hadn't realized they were taking runes as one of their electives, but it quickly became clear they had just as much interest in making enchanted toys and jokes as they had in deploying them. Percy and Penny dropped in when their schedules allowed.

One evening toward the end of January it was just me, Neville, Hermione, and Penny in the runes workshop. Percy had an early prefect patrol and the twins had detention. The two first-years had mostly sat quietly watching Penny and me work on our projects, since they were still a long way from even having the rudiments of being able to help. Neville eventually spoke up and said, "I still don't understand. You can't just be writing the runes or anyone could do it. What are you _actually _doing with enchanting?"

"You know you don't have to raise your hand, right, Hermione?" I asked the muggleborn, who still sometimes got excited and reached for the sky when she knew something. "You want to explain?"

She nodded and started reciting a memorized explanation from a textbook that should have been way too advanced for her. "All magic is about intent. When casting a spell, the proper wand movements and words create a shape for the magic to take, but your _intent _causes your magic to enter this created matrix. Similarly, runes can create their own long-lasting matrix based on their signifiers, but it is the witch or wizard's intent that fills the space created by the runes and empowers the object or ritual."

"So, putting down runes is basically instead of waving your wand and saying the words?" Neville summarized.

I glanced at the blonde Ravenclaw, knowing this was the same topic that had us arguing in our first runes class, but explained, "Basically. But the devil's in the details."

Penny looked ready to jump in, so I let her continue the explanation, and she said, "There's a lot of arithmantic significance in wand movements and words. If you write down a spell's wand motions and how to pronounce the words, you don't even really have to tell someone what it's supposed to do. If I had you learn this wand movement and then told you to say '_Wingardium leviosa_' while you were doing it, and you'd never even heard of the levitation charm, it would probably still levitate what you're pointing at."

"Unless you're Seamus," Neville said and Hermione grinned.

Penny looked confused, so I explained, "Seamus Finnegan tends to cause things to catch fire and explode whenever he tries something new. It's why I'm teaching him to use foci instead of a wand. But that's because he's getting the gestures and words slightly wrong. _Somehow _that usually accidentally creates an unstable matrix that can blow up."

The prefect shook her head at the bad luck of Gryffindors, but went on, "Runes aren't exactly like casting a spell. I could write runes on an object that I was enchanting, and then someone could create a duplicate of the object or just use really good penmanship to copy what I did onto their own object. But mine would work when I put power into it, and the copies wouldn't. Because the runes don't actually do anything on their own. This is Eihwaz," she said, sketching the rune. "It's used to mean 'defense' and you'll see it on most protective enchantments."

"That's on Harry's shield bracelet!" Hermione said, recognizing it. I nodded and shook the bracelet out of my sleeve to show her and Neville that the rune did, in fact, show up on a lot of the charms hanging from the jewelry.

"Right," Penny continued, "but it's not the only rune on there, and it's not just put on there arbitrarily. You have to understand the spell you're trying to create, ideally on an arithmantic level, then place the runes to match that in a way that resonates with you." With a nod to what I'd explained earlier in the year, she finished, "The runes are really just a visual aid for you, to make it easier for your mind and magic to press the energy of the spell into the object."

Hermione seemed to get it, but Neville still looked like he wasn't quite there, so I just said, "If you could hold the whole spell in your head all at once, you wouldn't need the runes. They're just there to make it easier to imagine the spell and will it into the object."

He finally seemed to get it, and proposed, "So if I made a good copy of your shield bracelet, it wouldn't be magic, but it would be easy for you to enchant it the same way you did the first time?"

I nodded, and said, "That's how they make so many magical toys and candies and such. You get it working once and then have the same wizard do the same enchantment over and over."

Penny added, "You do it enough, especially for simple things like chocolate frogs, and you don't need the runes anymore. Pay attention for when runes show up on your frogs, because that probably means someone new started at the company and doesn't have the spell memorized yet."

"How long does it take to learn to do this?" he asked, suddenly struck by the enormity of it.

"You do really basic stuff at the end of your first year of runes, and more and more the longer you're in it. Harry's ahead of the rest of us because he had to know it to make his own foci, but I can at least mostly follow what he's doing."

Both of the first-years nodded, not really getting it but deciding that it didn't seem impossible that they would by the time they were our age. Though I suspected that Hermione would try it even earlier, especially since she was interested in foci and ritual magic.

Penny's watch chimed. Somehow she'd spelled it to work like a digital alarm clock, with multiple alarms at different times. "Ten minutes to curfew," she warned us. "Why don't you two head back and I'll walk Harry up when we're done packing up."

"The advantages of being friends with prefects," I grinned at her. She smiled shyly back and turned to pack her enchanting gear up, but I thought I caught a bit of a blush, which confused me.

It did, in fact, take me past curfew to get to a safe stopping point where none of my enchantments were in a state they'd fall apart from being unfinished, and then put my gear up. As we closed down the lab room and headed toward the towers, there was a minute of strangely tense silence before Penny mentioned, "Hogsmeade weekend coming up."

Thrown by her blush earlier but still mostly oblivious, I said, "Yeah. I'll have to figure out a way to entertain myself while you and Percy are off. I wonder if Oliver wants to hang out or if he's asked someone…" I trailed off as I realized she'd stopped walking. Behind me, she had a weird, unhappy look on her face, and I blundered on, "Has Percy not actually asked you yet?"

"_Percy_ is going to ask me?"

Dumb 16-year-old that I was, I missed the emphasis and just got offended at my roommate for dragging his heels on asking the girl he was in love with out for Valentine's day. I just said, "He said he was going to. _Days_ ago, actually."

I was too dense to follow the lightning-fast series of emotions that flitted across the blonde Ravenclaw's face, but after a couple of seconds she said, "Oh. Okay. I, um, just remembered that I have to get straight to the tower. Can you get back to Gryffindor safely?"

"I think so. Good night, Penny."

"Good night, Harry," she coughed out, before scurrying away from me toward Ravenclaw tower. I watched her leave with a frown, confused in the way that only oblivious teen boys can be about what had just happened, and then headed toward my own tower.


	40. Friday I'm in Love

February 14th was on a Friday, with the Hogsmeade weekend to follow. Friday was usually a free day for me and Percy, with the Gryffindor first and third years busy all day, and Penny busy most of the day, so we'd started using it for OWL prep. Well, I studied for OWLs all day, and Percy actually spent a bunch of time on his homework while shooting me dirty looks for ignoring my own.

At least, that was a normal Friday, and until breakfast on the 14th I had no reason to believe it would be an unusual day. Obviously, with a busy day of class and the weekend right there, everyone would wait for Saturday to celebrate Valentine's Day. Obviously.

They did _not_.

Several girls were hanging out in the Gryffindor common room when Percy, Oliver, and I headed down to go to breakfast. Alexis Marie, the dark-haired prefect, seemed to be waiting for Oliver, and immediately peeled him off to go down to the great hall. Behind her was a girl who I thought was a year behind us with reddish-brown hair. "Want to walk me to breakfast, Harry?" she asked.

I'd maybe said five words to her in passing over the year, and only really recognized her as another of Hagrid's student friends who was as mad as he was about magical creatures. "Sure… Mathilda?" I guessed, pretty sure she had the same name as a Roald Dahl novel.

Her grin showed I'd gotten it right, and I thought I saw several of the other girls in the room deflate. I shot Percy a look over her head trying to convey my confusion about what the hell was happening, and he just shrugged, equally clueless.

As we walked ahead of Percy out of the common room, I took a stab at why she might have wanted to talk to me, given her interest in creatures, "Did Hagrid show you the leucrottas?"

"Yes. They're fascinating! I didn't think I'd see one in person without taking a trip to India. So large up close! And you killed one?" Her phrasing was staccato, and she was Welsh, maybe? I hadn't really figured out how to distinguish British accents.

"Percy was the MVP," I nodded back to the prefect, trailing behind us. "He kept everything under control and transfigured the spikes."

"Yes! Clearwater's a lucky girl," she acknowledged, realizing Percy was still within earshot.

"You _did _invite her to Hogsmeade, right?" I asked my roommate.

"I… mentioned it in passing," he hedged. "She has been fairly taciturn lately." He wasn't wrong. Penny had been a little distant since our conversation after the enchanting session, with both me and Percy. "Definitely today. By lunch, certainly."

"If Percy hasn't actually asked her out," I wondered to Mathilda, "I guess the rumor is that he's going to? Since you said she was lucky?"

"That is the rumor, yes," she said, slightly cagily. "That the romance in your study group is definitely _Percy _and Penny. Took months for that to be clear! So what are you doing for Hogsmeade tomorrow, Harry?"

"Guess Oliver is going with Alexis," I mused. Without the study group to hang out with, I didn't have a lot of reason to hang out around a town that basically became a glorified shopping mall for the students. My finances were still extremely limited. "I'll probably see if Dervish and Banges has any deals. Maybe check Pippin's for potions ingredients." I was clearly waiting for someone to provide me with an engraved invitation. Those invitations would be forthcoming.

We made it down to breakfast with Mathilda getting strangely frustrated at my attempts to make casual conversation. I usually didn't get mail, the lunch invitation from Malfoy at the previous Hogsmeade being the main exception. So when the owls started showing up with morning post, I was surprised to have over a dozen envelopes dropped on me. I didn't get the _most_ of anyone I could see, but I was certainly up there.

"Merlin, Harry, leave some witches for the rest of us," snarked Fred.

"Not that we're into that kind of thing, yet," added George.

"Right, you don't want to get them interested too early in your school career, or you'll lose valuable prank research time," explained Fred.

"Next year?" George asked his brother.

"After the holidays," nodded Fred, finalizing their dating calendar.

"You sure you don't want some of these?" I shrugged at the twins, flipping through the stack of mail and seeing the names of a bunch of girls I'd barely said a word to.

Mathilda, who'd sat across from me and looked put out when I'd received so many letters now looked confused. Leaning forward, she said quietly enough that it wouldn't actually carry too far down the table, "Harry are you… only interested in wizards?"

"What? No. Why?" I asked her, still not sure why it was suddenly everyone's business.

"It's just," she tried to explain, as if to a child, "everyone thought you and Penny might have something going on. Then the rumor was that it was her and Percy. Which meant everyone had a shot with you that they hadn't realized."

"Why would everyone care? None of them have even really talked to me before today. Including you."

Percy had taken off his glasses and was pinching the bridge of his nose as if he had a headache, and the twins, who'd overheard from two seats down, glanced at each other before George explained, "Harry. Is there not a mirror in the fifth-years' bathroom?"

I shrugged. "I'm nothing special."

"Obviously neither of us can speculate on whether you fit the 'handsome' part of 'tall, dark, and handsome,' but you've definitely got the other two going for you and witches are supposed to be into that," elaborated Fred.

"You fought a troll and that moose-monster," added George.

"You have a mysterious and tragic past," noted Fred.

"You've got an American accent," tagged in George.

"And you certainly have the biggest staff in the whole school," finished Fred, snickering.

While my self-esteem had never been particularly low, I'd also never needed to worry about dating. Elaine and I were the only ones of the same age we knew and could talk to about magic, and we'd gotten together basically the moment we both realized our hormones had kicked into gear. I'd honestly never considered whether I might have an easy or a hard time getting a date. Plus, at the time, I was damaged goods. "I'm honestly not interested in dating right now," I shrugged.

"Today _would _be a good time to decide to, if you _were_," said Percy, somewhat hypocritically, given his delay on talking to Penny. I wondered if part of it was trying to get me paired off if, as Mathilda said, he was worried that Penny was interested in me. And, of course, that was the moment I realized what she'd been asking the other night and why she hadn't been talking to me.

I sighed and rubbed my head, picking up Percy's headache at my own obliviousness. "I'm sorry, Mathilda, but it's true. Chalk it up to the whole 'mysterious and tragic past' thing the twins mentioned. My head's still not in a place where I've even been thinking about witches. Or wizards." I turned to Percy and asked, "When you talk to Penny, can you please tell her I need to apologize at her earliest convenience?"

As awkward as it was, he passed on the message and I met her at our study table in the library during her mid-morning free period. "I'm sorry for the other night," I told her. "I had no idea anyone might be interested, but, in particular, I met you knowing how much Percy liked you and never thought of you in that way. I thought you understood that too." Feeling like that was a non-apology, I added, "But I'm sorry I was too thick-headed and hurt your feelings."

"So you've _never _been interested?" she asked, still looking a little hurt, though better after the apology.

"Please don't spread this around, because it's pretty private," I began, figuring I had to tell her most of it. "My girlfriend, who I thought was the love of my life, betrayed me, set me up to be a victim of a dark magic ritual, and then _probably_ died when I escaped and the ritual went bad. That was only six months ago, and I don't have any closure. I seriously haven't thought about _anyone _romantically since then."

"But… if… when you did…"

While I seriously hadn't thought about it, the blonde Ravenclaw looked and acted enough like Elaine that, if we dated, I'd be admitting I had a type. For my own sanity, I probably needed to date someone different enough to avoid the risk of flashes of the boggart Elaine. Maybe an outgoing, highly practical, dark-haired-and-complexioned girl would do the trick. Rather than point that out, I asked, "Are you just not interested in Percy? Because he really likes you."

"No, Percy's okay. It's just, he's not–"

While I knew she was about to say "you," I cut her off and tried, "On a corrupt auror's hit list? Hung up on his ex? Planning to disappear to America and the muggle world after graduation? Profoundly damaged?"

"You're not as damaged as you think you are, Harry," she said with a sad smile. "You should let yourself be happy. But thanks for the apology, and letting me down easy."

I nodded. In my mind, I hoped she was right. But, in my heart, I knew that if she knew all my secrets, she'd take it back and wonder why she'd ever been interested.


	41. Lights in the Darkness

Things settled back into a rhythm as spring approached. Gryffindor won the quidditch match against Hufflepuff, putting Oliver in a better mood. Our study group expanded to include most of the fifth-year Gryffindors and Ravenclaws when we worked on defense, since Quirrell's performance in the subject had degraded even further over the winter, and he seemed tired all the time. I did pretty well in class, and Percy and Penny were talented as well, so especially with the impromptu sessions I'd been giving the Weasleys and friends, there was a lot of interest in our help.

McGonagall hadn't been moved by my mention that maybe I should get some extra tutoring fees for the defense group and the enchanting training, but apparently someone in Gryffindor had overheard. While the Weasleys didn't have extra money for the lessons, the Longbottoms and Grangers were significantly better off, and Neville and Hermione started quietly slipping me a few galleons and pounds, respectively, here and there. It was appreciated, since enchanting wasn't a cheap hobby, even with school resources and my Christmas gifts.

And it wasn't long before I had reason to appreciate all the work I'd been putting into it.

One night in March, it was just our smaller study group of me, Percy, Penny, and Oliver. We'd gone over some transfiguration and charms, then made a sideline toward whether anyone had gotten any closer on the arithmantic comparison of the patronus to fiendfyre. We had some ideas, but nothing that was elegant enough that we felt like we could successfully lift it out and apply it to another curse. We'd at least consistently been getting closer to casting a patronus, and had all managed the white mist that was supposed to be the first step in a corporeal manifestation. I'd been fortunate to discover that my mother's amulet seemed designed as a focus for multiple forms of light magic, and I could use it for the patronus; without it, I'd have been having an even harder time doing it with no focus at all.

"Almost curfew," Oliver mentioned, clearly not keeping up with the mathematical discussion. "Goin' to head back to the tower."

"Don't wait up on us," grinned Penny. "We'll patrol our way back in a bit."

Oliver and I gave the two prefects a smirk. After her initial hesitancy to get into a relationship with Percy, Penny had apparently found _something _she liked. The two had been finding plenty of opportunities to make out (or "snog" as the locals liked to call it). "Pince usually starts kicking people out from the east side, so you'll have more time on the west," I mentioned.

They both grinned and grabbed their stuff to head that way, as I left the library with the quidditch captain. "Glad to see Percy loosen up," Oliver mentioned, as we walked. "He's at least three times easier to deal with since you got here."

I shrugged, "Hogwarts students just seem to need an outside perspective and a kick in the ass."

"Yourself excepted, o'course?" he smirked.

"I know what my problems are," I sighed. "Doesn't make them any easier to solve."

"Just seems weird that there's so many witches interested in _helpin' _you solve them, and you're not interested." He caught my look of annoyance, and added, "But I should definitely stay on m'own goals and not tell you how to defend your–"

Oliver was cut off as a red light smashed into him from the side and he slumped over. I barely had time to turn to note that the spell had come from a dark corridor to our left before another bolt of red light hit me square in the chest.

I felt it dissipate into my warded vest as I shook my shield bracelet out and hissed out, "_Protego!_" After a moment of peering through my shield into the darkness waiting for the next attack, I heard booted feet slapping against the stone and running off. I kept my shield up but tapped Oliver with my staff and said, "_Rennervate!_"

Shaking his head and realizing he'd slumped to the floor, he asked, "What in Merlin's name just happened?"

"Someone fast cast a pair of stunners at us without saying the words. Hit both of us dead center from at least fifty feet down that hallway."

"That's… damn, that's some good castin'. Why aren't we both out?" He groaned, standing up and, as an afterthought, readying his wand.

"I wear a vest that can take a spell or two. Heard about getting hexed in the halls, and also that first day in defense class. Wasn't actually sure it would stand up to a stunner. Might not have if they'd tried for force instead of stealth. Ran off after I got a shield up."

"We better tell McGonagall," he suggested, still groggy from his unexpected nap, and favoring a knee that he'd knocked into the stone floor.

A few minutes later, we'd caught her in her rooms, fortunately before she'd started getting ready for bed, and told her what happened. "I'll mention it to Albus. Unfortunately, if you didn't see who it was, there's not much we can do. Let's hope it was an attempt at a prank." She frowned, considering how few people could probably have managed the feat, upper-years all. "Be careful to travel in larger groups this close to curfew. It may be the quidditch rivalry flaring up. Five points for preparation and protecting your friend, Mr. Dresden."

The news traveled fast through Gryffindor when we got back, and the next day there was a rash of detentions as various members of my house got into impromptu arguments and hallway duels with Slytherins after accusing them of the attack. It got bad enough that Dumbledore stood up at dinner and asked everyone to knock it off. "The investigation is ongoing. Students are not to hex one another in the hallways, even if you feel your house was hexed first."

After my time in the orphanage, I'd never felt completely safe sleeping in a room with other boys at Hogwarts, so was a light sleeper at the best of times. Thus, I probably would have woken anyway that night, when someone tore open the curtains on my bed not long after midnight. But the caterwauling charm I'd placed on the curtains guaranteed it. Unfortunately, it didn't save me from the "_Stupefy!_" that the shadowy figure cast in at me. And I didn't wear my vest to bed.

But the alarm wasn't just for me. I came to with Percy standing by my bed in his pajamas, wand out from having just revived me. Oliver was standing over a boy's body, bound tightly in conjured ropes. Our other two roommates, Lennox and Horton, were groggily covering the room. "It was Meakin," Percy said, gesturing to the boy on the floor.

In the dim candles that had been hastily lit in the room, and with Percy's naming him, I recognized him as a Gryffindor fourth-year. Top of his class for our house, everyone expected him to be a prefect next year. He probably would be able to cast a stunner, even though it was a little advanced for him, but something didn't seem right. "There's no way it was him last night," I grumbled.

"Unless he's secretly some kinda prodigy at stunners," Oliver nodded. He nudged the incapacitated boy with his foot. "What's goin' on, Cyril?"

"Have to… have to… have to stun Dresden. Bring him outside. Do it quietly. Wait until they're all asleep." The boy had a glassy look, and was babbling as if trying to work out for himself how it had gone wrong.

"Is he…?" asked Percy.

"Imperiused," I nodded. "I think so."

"I will get McGonagall," the prefect said. "Do not do anything to him unless he somehow gets out." He headed out of the room.

Our head of house showed up ten minutes later, this time clearly woken from bed and much less put together than the severe dress she usually affected. "Oh my!" she said, upon seeing the fourth-year and hearing him babble. With a gesture and whisper of "_Expecto nuntius_," she effortlessly summoned an ethereal silver cat and told it, "Albus. I need you immediately in the Gryffindor common room. A student has been imperiused."

As the cat raced off, pointing out just how much further we had to go learning the patronus, she levitated Meakin and had us follow her down to the common room.

"I'm sorry I didn't take this more seriously yesterday," she apologized to me and Oliver. "It appears someone in the school is trying to capture Mr. Dresden."

I nodded, upset about it as well. "There can't be many people that can silently cast two stunners that fast _and_ cast the imperius." She nodded and I thought about it a moment more, then added, "And why is someone that good at spells just hiding in dark hallways and using fourth-years?"

"Hopefully Albus will be able to find out," she said, clipped, and I got the impression that she was both angry and worried, particularly that someone had used an Unforgivable on one of her students.

A few minutes later, Dumbledore walked into the common room. I couldn't tell whether he'd attempted to dress first, or whether the blue robe with pink starbursts was just his pajamas. "My, my, my," he fretted, examining the almost-prefect on the couch while Percy quickly summed up what had happened. "Let us see if we can get some answers." Slipping into teacher mode, he explained, "One of the worst things about the imperius curse is that it has no specific counterspell, and does not respond to the general. It would be much easier to clear people of if it did. Instead, it requires a specific ritual to clear, which works best if the command is no longer achievable." He produced a kit of specialized inks and spent several minutes using them to paint glyphs upon the fourth-year's forehead and cheeks, muttering a ritual incantation. There was a brief flash of colors and the glassy look on Meakin's face cleared, replaced with normal confusion. "Mr. Meakin, what can you tell us?"

"I didn't mean to, Dresden!" he said, panicked. "I don't know why I did that! Please, Professors, I don't know why I attacked another student!"

"Easy, my boy," the headmaster said consolingly, wordlessly dispelling the ropes binding the kid. "We don't believe you were at all responsible. We merely wonder whether you know who compelled you to do these things."

"I… I can't remember anything since lunchtime," he said, suddenly looking panicked.

While we waited, McGonagall had woken his roommates and questioned them. "Albus. None of his friends remembers seeing him after lunch today, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. He was going to spend his free periods in the library, but never made it to his defense class this afternoon."

"May I look inside your mind, Mr. Meakin, to see if I can find out what happened?" Dumbledore asked, and the boy nodded. "_Legilimens!_" he cast, then spent a minute staring the boy in the eyes. Withdrawing, he explained, "His entire afternoon has been obliviated, and it was done well. I suspect he was taken between lunch and his class, moved to a location he could be hidden until curfew, then memory charmed and compelled."

"Who would do this, Albus?" worried McGonagall.

"Someone, I fear, who is clever but suddenly very desperate…" mused the headmaster.

The first unicorn was killed that weekend.


	42. The Meaning of A Cursed Life

I found out about the unicorn about a week after the attack.

While I tried to be as clear as possible without coming off as conceited that dating was _not_ going to happen, Mathilda had maintained an effort to be friendly with me after Valentine's Day. We both had a free period before dinner on Wednesdays, and she found me reading in the common room when she burst inside, still windblown from being on the grounds.

"Harry!" she grabbed a wooden chair and dragged it right up against the plush one I was sitting in, flouncing into it. "Did you hear? I just heard it from Kettleburn in class! Hagrid found a dead unicorn in the forest. Which is _awful_. But interesting! Something killed it and didn't try to eat it! But it was bleeding."

My interest in magical creatures was basically just how they related to the Nevernever, how useful they were for potions and enchanting ingredients, and whether I needed to know about them for defense class. But unicorns were in the center of that Venn diagram. "And they left the horn?"

She nodded, excited. "Right!? That was my first thought, too. Ugly one-horned mule!"

"You've seen _Legend_?"

"It's only why I decided to be a magizoologist!" she exclaimed. "I mean… Tim Curry's _horns_! Also, the unicorns, and goblins, and faeries, of course."

"But… aren't you a pureblood?"

"We're not _all _completely backwards," she explained. "Uncle Abraham convinced the Ministry that someone needs to stay on top of muggle fantasy films. You know, to make sure they're not accidentally getting too close to the truth. So we've gotten to go to the movies on the Ministry's sickle my whole life." She seemed to file away that it was something else to talk to me about, but just said, "Anyway! Dead unicorn. Very mysterious. Didn't eat it. Didn't seem to take any major components. What's unicorn blood used for, anyway?"

"Nothing good," I admitted. "I think it's illegal to trade. I've never seen it for sale. I'll… do some research."

I headed upstairs. None of the other guys were in my room, so I closed the door and fished my bag of holding out of my trunk and pulled the skull free from that. "Hey, Bob, quick question."

A nocturnal spirit by nature, Bob's eyes flickered dimly as they lit up in the tower room. Without the skull to protect him, he wouldn't even be able to be coherent in the sunlight that streamed into the tower room. "Harry? Huh? Oh. Yeah, sure, what's up?"

"Unicorns. Any natural or supernatural predators that would just make them bleed but not eat them? Also, what's their blood for?"

He yawned, the jaw of the skull latching all the way open in my hand, before saying, "No way. Unicorns are basically like those brightly colored frogs in the Amazon. You get any blood in you, you'll wish you hadn't. Nothing eats them that knows any better."

"So why would someone want unicorn blood?"

"It's pure life energy. But it's dangerous the same way as breathing pure oxygen. It's useful in all kinds of potions to create and extend life, or you can just drink it straight. But you shouldn't. After you drink it, you have a worse problem. Starts to burn you out from the inside. Pretty soon you need _more_ unicorn blood to keep the _last_ batch from killing you."

"So you'd basically already need to be dying to try it?"

"Right. And the best you can do is _slow down_ the problem. People have tried to weaponize it into poisons. But there's intentionality involved. You have to know what you're drinking. If you accidentally drink unicorn blood, it doesn't do anything. Also, who's the babe?"

"What. Is. That? Other than _awesome_!?" Mathilda exclaimed from behind me.

"Hell's bells," I groaned. I'd been so engrossed in what Bob was saying that I hadn't heard the door open. And since I didn't have a focus for the locking spell, I was bad at remembering to use it. I strode around the brunette and pushed the door back closed where she'd slipped in after glancing to make sure no one else was in the hallway. "Can I trust you to keep a secret?"

"Depends on who you killed to make a talking skull," she said, apparently suddenly realizing that I had a foot of height on her, she was trapped in a room with me, and I'd been warning her about my mysterious past for a month. Strangely, it didn't seem to make her afraid, just slightly more cautious.

"Nobody. I inherited him. But he's so cool that a ton of people would try to steal him. So he has to stay a secret," I wheedled. I saw Bob's eyes flicker as he preened at being called cool.

"I'll bet. Tutelary skull? Isn't that dark magic?"

"I'm not a tutelary skull," Bob said, offended. "I just happen to live in this skull. Because it's nice, and I haven't found anything better."

"Fair enough," she allowed. "You'd be the expert."

I tried to make her a deal. "If you keep it a secret, I'll let you have supervised access for research questions. I assume you heard about the unicorn blood. He's way faster than looking things up in the library."

"Sold!" she grinned.

"Bob: Mathilda Grimblehawk. Mathilda: Bob."

"Pleased to meet you, Bob," she sketched an overly-dramatic curtsy. "What are you, anyway? Spirit-being?"

"Greater wizarding academia's lack of knowledge about spirits is _adorable_," Bob told her. "But, yes, they'd probably classify me as a spirit-being. Watch out, world, they might _double _their number of known spirits in that category."

"I've wondered about that," she admitted. "Why are there so few known spirit types?"

"Most of us are far happier in the Nevernever." Bob yawned, "Anyway, if you have any more questions about unicorns, I'm going to need Miss Grimblehawk to lose the robe and–"

"No! All answered here!" I interrupted, shoving him back in my bag. "Sorry," I told her, probably blushing a little. "I'm not sure why a spirit of intellect is a total lech, but that's _another _good reason not to let other people know about him."

"I mean… if I _have _to strip to power the magic encyclopedia," she said, slowly reaching up to unbutton the top of her robe. Before I could remind my eyes to blink, she grinned, "Your face!" After quietly chuckling at my expense, she added, "So, _what's _the deal with the unicorn?"

I frowned, "Whoever killed it needed to stay alive, no matter the cost. And will probably need to kill another one before long. So it was someone _desperate…_"


	43. Easter Eggs

For a society that prided itself on being nonreligious, I found it interesting that Hogwarts' winter and spring breaks were locked to the Christian holidays. Easter could vary by weeks from year to year, but it still sat at the center of the two week break. I wondered if they had to change their lesson plans for the winter and spring semesters based on where the holiday fell.

By spring break, nothing else exceptional had happened. As far as we had heard, no more unicorns had been killed, and nobody had made another attempt to kidnap me. The only change to the status quo had been discovering I had someone to talk to about muggle media. I was gratified that Mathilda had been persistent in wanting to be my friend, since I'd genuinely missed having someone around my age to talk to about things outside the magical world.

Of course, I hadn't even thought about Hermione, either, since she seemed like she only read educational nonfiction. But she overheard me talking with Mathilda one day about how Tolkien had to have met Dumbledore to invent Gandalf, and jumped right into the conversation. It turned out that Jean and Helen Granger were dedicated science fiction buffs. Once the first-year realized that Mathilda's literary knowledge dropped dramatically the further we got from popular fantasy films, she went to the owlery with a determined look in her eyes.

A few days later, the first nerd care package from her parents showed up. She'd asked them to just grab whatever they could from the sci-fi/fantasy paperbacks slush pile at their used book store. Suddenly, young Miss Granger had currency that was far more effective than cash for paying me and Mathilda for tutoring. And I finally had something more interesting to do with my leisure time than rereading Lockhart's books or delving into the smut romance novels that Madam Pince favored.

Over the break, the castle was significantly more populated than it had been at Christmas. While some kids went home, most seemed to use the two week holiday from classes as their last chance to finish up projects and studying before the end of the year exams, especially with the late Easter meaning the break ended with only two months left in the year.

With our OWLs coming up, which were comprehensive of the previous years, Percy, Penny, Oliver, and I tapped some of our lower-year friends to exchange studying. We'd clear up anything they were still confused about, and that would help us remember the topics (or, for me, sometimes realize they were even a thing).

For first-years, Hermione, Ron, Neville, and Seamus were our usual ducklings. Second was more limited, since Katie Bell from the quidditch team was the main one any of us talked to, but Penny grabbed a couple of girls from Ravenclaw as well: Cho Chang and Marietta Edgecombe. Nearly all the rest of the Gryffindor quidditch team sat in for our third-years. For fourth-years, it was mostly just Mathilda; though we also tried to include Cyril Meakin as a "sorry you were mind controlled" gesture, he wasn't that interested and showed up rarely.

So we were sitting around the afternoon of the last Friday of the break studying fourth-year material just the four regulars and Mathilda. Both Oliver and Mathilda were looking longingly at the nice day outside the library windows, half paying attention. I was doing a little better, but missed a question Percy had asked when I saw Hagrid wander out of the library. "Didn't know he ever came in here," I mused.

"Well good for Hagrid at least, coming to the library to _study_," snarked the Weasley prefect.

"Sorry, Percy. Ummm, the opening charm is '_aperio_' but you can prefix it with the Latin for the type of object you're opening to help you visualize the right opening motion and make sure you don't just rip it apart." I considered, "Or you can use your hands, because you're not an invalid."

"You should probably leave off the editorializing on the test, Harry," giggled Penny.

Percy was about to throw someone else a quiz question, but Hermione's crew hurried over from the direction we'd seen Hagrid. They all had their precious "we are only twelve but think we've discovered something _important_" looks on their faces. Neville, who was the most even-tempered of the four, elected himself spokesman and said, with a glance of apprehension at the two prefects, "We were going to go talk to Hagrid about the _research project_."

Percy and Penny knew that the kids thought Fluffy was guarding a philosopher's stone. I wouldn't have been surprised if the _entire school_ knew the kids' theory. When they were trying to keep a secret, they huddled together, made exaggerated squinty eyes, and talked in stage whispers. It was _adorable_. But it was also irrepressible, and Percy had weeks previous put me on the duty of making sure his baby brother didn't do anything insane chasing their theory.

"I can head down with you," I offered.

"Oh! Visiting Hagrid? I'll go too," Mathilda grinned, grasping the excuse.

"I'm _definitely _goin' with 'em on whatever this research project is," mugged Oliver. "I am definitely _not _just goin' outside to go flyin' on this beautiful day."

"Fine. Leave us. Someone has to study," grumbled Percy.

"Sure. Don't want to fail your anatomy elective," I smirked at him, and he and Penny blushed.

The seven of us wandered down to the grounds, and Oliver, true to his thinly-veiled promise, waved goodbye to go to the quidditch pitch. Ron, straining to maintain loyalty over fun, quickly ran out of willpower and yelled, "Wait up, Oliver!" before running off to fly brooms and pick up quidditch pointers from the older Gryffindor.

"Would anyone else rather go flying?" Hermione huffed.

"Actually, yeah," admitted Seamus, who spent half of his flying classes in with me being tutored in foci. He dashed off after the other two, leaving me, Mathilda, Hermione, and Neville.

"Easier fit in Hagrid's hut, anyway!" Mathilda laughed, trying to mollify the bushy-haired first-year.

"Why aren't you more interested in brooms, Neville?" I asked. "Seems like all the other pureblood boys are obsessed with flying."

He shrugged, "You've seen how clumsy I am sometimes on the ground. I figure I should stick to what I'm good at."

We all admitted that was a good idea, before Hermione finally shared why we were walking across the lawn to Hagrid's hut, "Hagrid was looking for books on dragons and acting like he was up to something."

Mathilda chuckled, "He's always been mad about dragons. Wants one desperately!"

"Isn't owning a dragon in Britain illegal?" suggested Hermione.

"Definitely!" admitted the aspiring magizoologist. "Still, it would be cool to see one without having to go to a preserve. Guess none of you have met Charlie Weasley? He graduated last year and went to work on one. He made me want to work with magical creatures."

"I thought that was _Legend_," I said.

"Right! Well, at least he made me realize that working with magical creatures was a real job. And I'd get to hang around cute guys doing it," she smirked. When her blatant flirting just got a raised eyebrow from me, she laughed, then noted, "That's a _lot _of smoke coming out of Hagrid's chimney for a nice spring day."

Hagrid's ability to keep a secret was slightly worse than the first-years', and everything about his hut was currently so suspicious that a five-year-old would think he was overdoing it a little to make it obvious that something was up. His windows were all heavily curtained, and, when he opened the door to Neville's knock, a blast of sweltering heat rolled out into the nice spring day. He ushered the four of us in, and if the hut weren't so drafty I'd worry he couldn't breathe in there.

"So… yeh wanted to ask me somethin'?" he asked, after his offer of tea and stoat sandwiches was waved off.

Neville and Hermione looked like they were about to ask something else, but Mathilda had spotted the large, black egg in the roaring fire. "Hagrid! Did you get a dragon egg!?"

"Ah! That's… er…" he fiddled with his beard, trying to come up with a lie.

"Is that a ridgeback?" she continued, moving over to appraise the egg. "I didn't think they even nested in Britain. How'd you get one?"

"Er. Yes. I won it in a game o' cards last night, from a stranger. Don' rightly know where he got it. Seemed glad ter be rid of it, ter be honest."

"But what are you going to do when it's hatched?" Hermione asked.

He pulled out a library book on dragon breeding and regaled us with his plan to keep it hot in the fire until it hatched, then feed it blood and brandy.

"Hagrid, you live in a _wooden house_," she insisted.

"Wood's only half the problem," Mathilda added. "It's going to be too big to fit in here within a couple of months."

While the girls were upset about the viability of Hagrid's hut, I pulled him back to something else he'd mentioned. "This stranger that gave you the egg. What'd he look like?"

"Dunno," he shrugged, "he wouldn' take his cloak off. Never saw his face."

And, of course, Hagrid didn't think that was incredibly suspicious. I asked, "And what did you talk about while you were playing cards?"

"Yeh know, he asked about the sorta creatures I look after, and I mentioned I'd always really wanted a dragon. An' then, I can't remember too well, 'cause he kept buyin' me drinks. Oh, right, he mentioned he _had _a dragon egg, and we could play cards for it. But he wasn' sure I could handle it, so I told him after Fluffy, a dragon would be easy."

Neville gasped, "Hagrid! Did he want to know how to get past Fluffy?"

Mathilda and I shared a look, but Hagrid kept on with, "I mean, I dunno if he _wanted _ter know, but I mentioned that Fluffy's a piece o' cake because yer just play him a bit o' music and he goes straight off to sleep…" he looked horrified. "Forget I said that!"

Hermione and Neville looked just as horrified as Hagrid, suddenly realizing that a stranger had essentially bribed Hagrid for the secret of how to get past Fluffy and steal the philosopher's stone. They looked at each other like, "What are we going to do?" That was when Mathilda and I lost it, and both started laughing.

"What's so funny!?" insisted Hermione, actually stomping her foot. "The thief can get past Fluffy whenever he wants! We have to tell Dumbledore."

Wracked by a further set of giggles at the first-year's exasperation, Mathilda choked out, "You… he… tell her, Harry."

I got myself back under control, not wanting to laugh in the kids' faces but they looked so self-righteous. "Guys. Umm… like half of Gryffindor has already gotten past Fluffy."


	44. Obstacle Course

Three childlike faces (one bearded and on a twelve-foot-tall body) looked at us in total confusion at my assertion that we'd already gotten past Hagrid's guardian cerberus, so I explained, "Oliver Wood and Jason Denbright figured out how to get past Fluffy about two weeks after winter break." Jason was one of the seventh-years that I wasn't too familiar with, but who was in NEWT care of magical creatures.

"I helped!" Mathilda objected.

I nodded to her, "Didn't know that. Okay, Mathilda, Oliver, and Jason figured out how to get past. Oliver's a surprisingly excellent singer."

"There's an alarm on the trap door, though," Mathilda admitted. "Jason and I didn't get out of the devil's snare before Dumbledore showed up and gave us detention for a week. Oliver managed to sneak out of it because he stayed upstairs to keep Fluffy asleep."

"Seems like it's a silent alarm to Dumbledore's office, though," I picked up the narrative. "A bunch of people started seeing how far they could get over dinner break because they knew he'd be away from the alarm for an hour."

"The keys were really hard at first. But now it's easy! The right one's so beaten up from everyone going through."

"Chessboard next, and nobody's been able to get past that before running out of time," I admitted. "Percy made everyone swear not to take Ron, because he's too little." It had actually been a bit of a challenge from me and his fellow prefects to convince Percy that the runs hadn't been rule-breaking he needed to crack down on, but he eventually relented, even if he hadn't been willing to make an attempt himself.

"Hilliard Hobday and Violetta Abbot claim they got close. She's pretty good at chess," Mathilda added. I didn't know the two seventh-years well, but she, indeed, was one of the only Gryffindors who could win more than the occasional game against Ron.

"None of yer were s'posed to do tha'!" insisted Hagrid. "Those protections are there fer a reason!"

"I can't believe Dumbledore protected the stone with obstacles a bunch of students can get past!" scoffed Hermione.

"I'd like to see a devil's snare," whispered Neville.

"Sorry, Nev," I told him. "Everyone agreed not to tell the lower-years about it until we were sure it was safe."

Mathilda explained, "The devil's snare actually just freezes when you're caught too tight. The keys are only a nuisance. And Fluffy doesn't seem like he'll actually bite students."

"Of course not!" Hagrid insisted. "He's a good boy. Well trained! He only bites if he senses dark magic."

"That's going to settle some bets," she grinned. "Anyway, we're still not sure about the chess board or what's past it, though. Everyone figured we'd start taking the lower-years once we figured it out completely."

"But. But… But!" Hermione seemed slightly broken before she finally got her brain in gear. "This is what's safer than Gringotts?"

I shrugged, "It's all logic and athletics problems. With enough time, motivated first-years could probably get through it no problem. But even seventh-years don't seem to have that much of an advantage. It slows everyone down pretty equally. It's probably better than a bunch of strong wards against someone who broke into Gringotts. You're just trying to slow them down enough that Dumbledore can get down there and stop them."

"Plus Dumbledore said it was out of bounds to everyone who didn't want to die a painful death," grinned Mathilda. "He might as well have just told us there was a fun obstacle course for Gryffindors. He actually _gave_ me five points for 'soothing the savage beast' on top of my detention. Seemed surprised it had taken that long for someone to get in."

I chuckled, "The funny part is that there are at least two-dozen Gryffindors that know how to get past Fluffy, but the thief still went to the trouble of bribing Hagrid with a dragon egg for the secret."

Mathilda frowned, "Everyone thinks we're meatheads. They probably asked the Ravenclaws and Slytherins and assumed if they didn't know, nobody did." She sighed, "I shouldn't feel so bad. The bad guy's probably all hopped up on unicorn blood and not thinking straight."

"You think?" I asked her, not having really taken Hermione's quixotic mission to protect the philosopher's stone seriously enough to consider that it might be related to my own problem.

"Easier to assume one bad guy," she shrugged.

I realized that the other three hadn't said anything for a minute and were just staring at me and Mathilda in astonishment. "We can tell McGonagall if you're worried?" I suggested to them.

"Would we, er… hafta mention tha egg?" asked Hagrid.

"I mean… Dumbledore _has _to know that the thief could figure it out since so many people know already," I mused.

So we agreed to not bring it up for the time being. It was almost certainly, ultimately, a mistake, but _Hermione _was probably the most emotionally mature of all five of us, so it's not that surprising we erred on the side of not getting our friend in trouble.


	45. A Dragon's Gold

"Harry! I can't believe you turned your back on this!" chortled Bob. I was staring fiercely at the door to the spare classroom I'd locked and silenced. "Oooh! It's cold in here, isn't it? Harry!"

"Stars and stones, Bob, seriously, I just don't know how to explain how wrong this is!" I hissed at him without turning around. "You know you didn't have to do this," I insisted to the witch in the room.

"You're just mad that you have to steal romance novels to pay the skull," Mathilda laughed. "This is way easier than digging through books in the library."

"I'll get the romance novels _for _you," I groaned.

"Listen, Harry, he's a spirit. You're being a gentleman! It's not a big deal." Without looking her in the face, I couldn't really gauge whether she was lying. "Okay. It's safe to turn around now. I mean, it _would _have been safe before…"

As I turned, Mathilda was buttoning the top of her robe back up, regarding me with a probing look. I still wasn't sure whether she was bluffing. Over the past few weeks, she'd been slowly ramping up the flirting to very aggressive levels. Most of it was probably because I was safe to experiment on: she'd told me she was interested, I told her I wasn't dating anyone but I _hadn't _told her it made me uncomfortable. I just couldn't figure out whether she was messing with me because it was funny, or whether she was genuinely trying to see if there was a limit she needed to hit to get my attention.

Rather than talk about it, she fixed her gaze on Bob and said, "You've had your show. Now spill. Everything you know on the raising and risks of baby dragons. Norwegian Ridgebacks specifically." She sighed, "I'm just so mad I missed a dragon hatching because I was stuck in care of magical creatures _class_."

The baby dragon had hatched during second period that morning, while I was in the middle of double potions and Mathilda had her elective. The quartet of first years had been able to go see, and had regaled Mathilda about it after lunch. She was determined to help out. She'd asked me for "a study date with your friend Bob after dinner" and here we were.

While Bob explained how to nanny a dragon in extensive detail while the excitable witch took notes, I thought about the other problem. The first-years hadn't been as careful as they should have been talking about their invitation at breakfast, and Draco had overheard and spied on them during the hatching. Apparently he'd developed an intense academic rivalry with Hermione over the past few months, got on with Ron like adding water to a grease fire, and was prejudiced against Hagrid. He and Neville seemed to get on okay, interestingly enough, continuing to play the "family honor" thing more for a running joke than out of any genuine animosity.

What he hadn't done was go running to a teacher or prefect to turn them in. Maybe he was planning something longer-term, but maybe he was waiting for an offer.

As Bob finished his ten-minute monologue, Mathilda started rolling up the notes she'd made into one big scroll and said, "I'm going to run down to Hagrid's. Got to cover all this before curfew. Coming?"

"No. I need to go talk to a tiny platinum-headed Slytherin," I replied.

"Oh! Yeah. Better you than me. Don't curse him in public," she grinned, not seeming too put out that I wasn't going with her.

"If it comes to that, we have bigger problems," I mentioned. "Back in the bag, Bob," I said, sliding him into my bag of holding. Only after that did I take down the charms on the classroom door, having learned from Mathilda walking in on Bob.

Mathilda rushed out toward one of the castle exits and I headed down into the dungeons. I found an alcove near the potions classroom and waited. At the end of dinner, I'd passed a hastily-scribbled note to Malfoy to meet here just before the first detentions. If he didn't show, I'd be able to flag down the twins on their way to their regular cauldron-cleaning penance with Professor Belby. Their knowledge of where to find people was uncanny, and seemed related to the scrap of parchment they often referenced when they thought nobody was paying attention.

I didn't have to avail myself of their services, however, as Draco came sauntering down the hall with his two baby bodyguards. To be fair, they'd started to fill out recently and might be quite the intimidating pair of human bookends in another couple of years. I'd propped my staff out of easy reach and clearly had my hands empty as I leaned against the alcove, so Malfoy gave the bigger boys the signal to wait and headed over.

"You wanted to meet?" he asked, a little too casually.

"What's your price?" I asked.

"Out of your range on most things," he sneered. "Perhaps you could be more specific."

"Malfoy," I sighed. "You have leverage. Being snide about it just makes people not want to deal. Or they think you're actually confused and don't know what they're talking about."

He thought about it, and probably thought about other business deals he'd witnessed. To be fair, from my meeting with his father, I wouldn't be surprised if the elder Malfoy was overly prone to being snide as well. The British dark wizards didn't seem to have gotten the memo that the best defense against the aurors was people going, "But he's so _nice_! There's no way he could be a Death Eater!" Finally, the boy said, "You're buying total silence from me until the giant oaf burns his hovel down and gets arrested all on his own?"

"Hopefully it won't come to that, but your consideration buys us some more time to convince Hagrid what an idiot he's being," I acknowledged.

"I want in on the enchanting lessons," he said.

I was actually surprised that was all he wanted. He must have been irked that Hermione and Neville were getting an education he couldn't. I decided to see how he was at negotiation. "Longbottom and Granger pay for my time. I can't afford to take on more students for free."

"Then they should pay my fees, since I'm doing a favor for them!" he insisted. I just shrugged, trying to give him the impression that I was just doing a favor for them as well. Finally, he scoffed, "Three galleons a lesson. Final offer!"

I concealed my grin mostly successfully. That was actually substantially more than I was getting from the other two. I'd _hoped_ Malfoy didn't have a good idea about how much money meant to those who weren't born wealthy. I held out for a second, trying to pretend I was thinking about haggling, then held out my hand. "Done. Next one's Thursday after dinner in the runes lab."

He hesitated for a second, as if realizing that had gone way too easily, but reached out and shook. "Pleasure, Dresden. See you then." I nodded and he sauntered off to rejoin his thugs, headed toward where the Slytherin dorms must be.

"Oy! Harry! Lurking in alcoves talking to snakes?" Fred asked as he and George wandered down the hall from the other direction, arriving just in time for their detention.

"Just making a deal to get him off your brother and his friends' backs," I told them. I winced as I realized, "You're going to have to put up with him in my enchanting lessons, though."

They shared a look and grinned. George snickered, "Regular private access to a baby snake?"

"Should be fun for the whole family," finished Fred.

"He's got some leverage," I warned them. "Give me a couple weeks until his blackmail's no longer good before you piss him off."

"Say no more!" George grinned as Fred tapped his nose.

"Well, we've got a date with some regulation-thickness cauldrons!" Fred suggested.

"Enjoy the rest of your evening, Harry!" George said as they headed into the classroom for their detention.

I decided I should probably tell Penny and Percy that I'd just thrown a match in the tinderbox that was our enchanting lessons. Hopefully they'd be less flammable than Hagrid's hut.


	46. She'll Be There When You Hit the Ground

May went by in a bit of a blur. Draco turned out to be surprisingly well behaved in our enchanting sessions, probably due to the lack of one Ron Weasley to set him off. Confronted with Neville and Hermione, his urge was to try to show them up, rather than fight with them. Since they'd had weeks of sessions on him, he had to buckle down, pay attention, and ask a lot of questions.

The issue of the dragon, who Hagrid insisted on calling Norbert, was solved before his hut burned down, but only barely. Once he was convinced that he would soon be unable to keep the dragon secret due to its increasing size, he agreed to try to find more suitable accommodations. We just told McGonagall that Hagrid had found a baby dragon in the forest. When she was dubious that such a thing would be in the forest, I just asked her, "Like the leucrottas?" She probably knew something was going on, but Norbert was quietly shipped off to a dragon preserve where Percy's older brother worked with no one getting in trouble.

While the twins might have liked to prank Malfoy now that his leverage was gone, the rapidly approaching exams put enough stress on everyone that Percy threatened dire consequences if Fred and George messed up the enchanting sessions. Everyone was already feeling like every spare moment should be using for year-end study, and the hour or two a week spent in the runes lab was harder and harder to justify. So Malfoy got off with only a couple minor pranks.

The lower-years had their exams early, to get them out of the way before the OWLs and then the NEWTs. Fortunately, Ron, Neville, and Seamus seemed up to the task of managing Hermione's panic attacks about first-year exams because it was starting to become my full-time job to handle it when Percy and Penny had nearly-nightly freakouts.

Like me, Oliver was content to underachieve and wasn't very stressed about OWLs. As long as he did well enough to stay captain of the quidditch team, he was happy. Instead, he was panicked about Gryffindor's quidditch match against Ravenclaw, which was scheduled for the Saturday before OWLs, just after the lower-years finished their own exams.

We'd cancelled the enchanting lesson the first Thursday in June, just before OWLs. Oliver was furiously drilling the quidditch team with all available daylight, which was all the way to curfew in Scotland this close to the solstice. After Percy had snapped several times at various lower-years who'd finished their exams earlier in the week and wanted to party while he was trying to study in the common room, we'd spent the day hidden away in an empty classroom near the library, just Percy, Penny, and me quizzing each other from test preparation questions.

"_Expecto patronum_," Percy tried again, in a lull between other subjects. A silvery shield appeared in front of his wand. All three of us had gotten to the shield but no further, missing some crucial mindset to achieve the animal imago that was full success at the spell.

"We may need to actually face a dementor in the field to cross the threshold?" Penny suggested, not liking how Percy was exhausting himself further trying to get it. "I know it's extra points on the defense OWL, but being able to do it at all is still a qualifier."

I wasn't thrilled at being stuck either, but as the sun finally started to set I realized how late it was getting. "It's almost curfew," I told them. "Do we want to keep pushing and use your prefect privileges to get in late, or hang it up and start again tomorrow?"

Percy seemed shocked at how late it was. "I have to do patrols!"

"Guess that's the answer," I smiled, tiredly. "Circle back up in the morning." I caught movement out the window and told Percy, "Maybe start by convincing Oliver to finish practice and escort the team back to the dorms? I think he lost track of time as much as you did."

Looking like he really wanted to chew them out, he finally sighed and said, "I guess the entire house would hate me if I came down on the team right before the game?"

"It's always best to balance discipline with morale," Penny grinned, giving him a kiss. "I'm heading back to my dorm. See you boys tomorrow."

I got back to Gryffindor tower pretty quickly as Percy went outside to convince the quidditch team to finish up. When I came in, Mathilda was in the common room, looking anxious, and asked me, "Did the kids ever find you?"

"No?" I said, confused. I realized I'd barely talked to the first-years all week. I wasn't even sure how they thought they'd done on their exams.

"They were freaking out. Dumbledore left for the Ministry. They kept going on about the stone not being protected, and the obstacle course."

I frowned. "You don't think they're just trying to finish the course because he's not here?" I could see Ron and Seamus trying it, but Hermione and Neville would have talked them out of it.

She shook her head. "They were worried, not excited. Said they'd tell McGonagall if they couldn't find any of the upper-years who know about it."

"How long ago was this?"

"At least an hour," she frowned.

I checked the time and saw that it was about ten minutes to curfew. A glance out the window and I could see there was still movement down on the quidditch pitch, so it would be a while before Percy got back with Oliver and the twins. "If we hurry you can go check with McGonagall and I'll make sure they didn't go into the obstacle course?"

"It's a plan," Mathilda admitted, shrugging.

I dropped my bag of books and study notes in the corner, but made sure I had all my foci. Something told me this wasn't going to just be a mission to round up kids who were overreacting.

On the way to the corridor, Filch saw me running and yelled, "Nearly curfew, Dresden!"

"Making sure nobody's in the third-floor corridor," I admitted, no time to come up with an excuse. If they were there, they either had a damned good reason or deserved the detention.

"Bloody Gryffindors!" he snarled, and followed me, Mrs. Norris bounding ahead.

Sure enough, when we got there, the door into Fluffy's room was hanging ajar, and I could hear a boy's voice singing, "...It's alright, it's alright, it's _alright_. She moves... in mysterious ways. It's alright, it's alright, it's _alright_. She moves... in mysterious ways."

"Is that… U2?" Filch asked, scratching his head.

I recognized that the song had played a couple of times in various businesses when I'd been out of the castle over Christmas, and nodded. I couldn't help but smirk and say, "I didn't take you for a muggle pop music fan, Mr. Filch."

"Mrs. Norris likes anything with a synthesizer. I like Rod Stewart and Queen," he shrugged.

I pushed the door the rest of the way open, and saw Seamus in the middle of the room, performing for an audience of one unconscious cerberus. The trapdoor the giant dog guarded was open, and the Irish boy was clearly trying to keep Fluffy asleep.

Spotting us, Seamus quickly rushed out, "McGonagall didn't believe us. Someone was here before us! The other three went in to stop him from getting the stone!" As the dog snorted and started to wake, he went back to his song, "One day you'll look back, and when you see where you were held by this love while you could stand there, you could move on this moment, follow this feeling…"

As the giant dog calmed back into sleep and Mrs. Norris looked intensely offended at the huge canine even existing, Filch growled, "Albus might let me break out the thumb screws for this lot!"

"Have to save them from dying down there to give them detention," I shrugged. "You want to come with?"

"I'm… er…" he started. Even though the challenges didn't really require much magic to get past, the old squib had enough mobility issues that he probably wouldn't be an advantage.

"Guard the room, let McGonagall know what's going on, and relieve Seamus when he runs out of U2 songs he knows?" I suggested. He nodded and I said, "Hopefully, I'll be back soon with some first-years earning a long detention." With that, I leapt through the trap door.


	47. Battlechess

I grabbed my staff with my legs like a broom as I fell, yelling, "_Arresto momentum!_" While the devil's snare was probably still at the bottom, I didn't want to risk that the kids had burned it up to get out. As my slowing spell turned the long fall into an easy drift, I wondered just how Dumbledore had set this much of the castle aside for the project. If Fluffy was on the ground floor it would make sense that I was in a dungeon, but from the third floor, it must have been a construction of walling-off existing rooms and opening new passages on the second and first floors. Or was the whole thing in an expanded wizard space?

After several more seconds than it would have taken if I'd fallen at full speed, I touched down into the vines of the giant plant that lurked in the darkness beneath the trap door. I only smelled a hint of recent smoke, which probably meant Hermione had handled the plant. I expected the whole thing would have been destroyed if Seamus had come along. I put a hand to my amulet and incanted "_Lumos solem!_" The obscure variation of the charm provided a warm glow much closer to sunlight, causing the tendrils of the plant that had already tried to bind me to shy away.

Wandering into the next room, the tinkle of the swarm of flying keys indicated that the second obstacle was still operating. In the light of my amulet, the flickers of metal were actually quite pretty. But the obstacle had been passed so frequently that the poor, abused key that opened the door flitted about on nearly-broken wings, unable to fly as fast or as high as the rest. I waited for my moment and just jumped, snagging the key out of the air as it tried to fly past. I assumed the impish Professor Flitwick had set this up, and never imagined anyone except maybe Hagrid would be able to reach ten feet in the air without the provided brooms.

The next room was the furthest I'd seen. If the professors checked at all, they must have known that students were coming down here: to either side of the immense chess board, piles of stone marked the previously-shattered chess pieces from the dozen or more games Gryffindors had started here. It had already reset, four rows of opposing, gargantuan figures magically reformed for a new game. Even the pawns stood taller than me, and the king and queen were gigantic.

I didn't need my amulet in the well-lit room, and let the light fade. Amid the rubble to the right side of the board, Ron Weasley's body was sprawled, either unconscious or dead. I skirted the edge of the board and leaned over the redhead, feeling for a pulse. He was alive, and the knot on his head made me expect that he'd taken a blow from one of the animated statues that were the chess pieces.

Not knowing how far ahead the others were, I didn't have time to try my limited healing skills on the boy. "Hope this works. _Rennervate!_" I wasn't _totally_ sure that the reviving spell was supposed to be used on a concussed target, but Ron started to struggle. Worried he wouldn't be able to _stay _conscious with the head wound, I fished out a small vial of potion from the back of my utility belt, checked it, and handed it to him, "Drink this."

"Ugh, what was that," Ron frowned after taking a single swallow to drink the green potion.

"Girding potion," I told him. "Don't know if boosting your endurance will help much, but it's the best I can do. What happened?"

"We played across the board," he explained. "I had to sacrifice myself to get Neville and Hermione through."

"What pieces did you replace?" I asked, curious.

"Knight, bishop, and castle," he said.

"Not the king or the queen?"

He thought for a moment and admitted, chagrined, "That would have been safer, wouldn't it?"

I just shook my head, helping him stand and started to say, "If you're feeling stable enough, take one of the brooms in the key room to fly back–"

"Harry!" yelled Hermione, running in from whatever was in the next room. Neville was right behind her, pieces of him flickering in and out as Ron's invisibility cloak flapped in the wind of his passage. "It's Quirrell! He was trying to get the stone!"

"He's right behind us, Harry!" Neville said, as they got closer. As soon as he was close enough to feel confident, he gave an underhand toss and a small, irregular red stone that glistened like glass in the torchlight flew through the air at me. I managed to catch it and shove it into a pouch in my belt. "Better you to protect it than me," he shrugged.

I heard running steps coming from the room they'd just exited, and hissed, "All of you under the cloak and sneak out of here!" They seemed to be complying, and I moved forward along the right hand side of the board until the white pieces on the far side turned, ready to stop me getting further. They'd hopefully serve as obstacles against the attacking defense professor.

Disheveled and winded from the run, a piece of turban unraveling and trailing behind him, the man in question raced out of the far hallway and into the middle of the chessboard before he saw me, my stunner speeding toward his flank. "_Protego!_" he shouted, just in time, flicking his wand into a shield to intercept my attack. "Dresden!" he shouted, "I should have known."

"No stutter, P-P-Professor?" I mocked, crouching slightly into a dueling stance, my left arm and shield bracelet forward while I held my staff slightly back. I drifted slowly back toward the black pieces so cover would be available, hoping the kids were clearing out.

"The time for subterfuge is over," he grinned. "_Colloportus!_" he suddenly shouted, gesturing at the door back into the room with the keys. "If the children are hiding, now they're trapped."

"And if they're already gone?" I tried to ask nonchalantly, hoping they were but realizing I hadn't heard the door open and close.

He shrugged, "Then it's just the three of us." With his free hand, he unwound the turban, trying to keep me covered with his wand as I reached the relative safety of the line of black pawns. "If they gave you the stone, I advise handing it over. You'll like that better than the alternative."

"Stone? Like this? _Depulso!_" I stepped back and swung my staff like a golf club, banishing a collection of chess piece rubble at the defense professor.

I was curious whether he knew how to make shields that could stop physical objects, but instead he shrieked and dodged, getting clipped by several pieces of small stone at the edge of my poorly directed attack. "You've made your choice, impudent boy! Master, should I kill him?"

"No!" ordered a wheezing voice that became clearer as he finished removing the turban from his prematurely bald head. "Until we have the ssstone, he is ssstill of use to me."

"So be it, _crucio!_" Quirrell flicked his wand at me, clearly hoping I _hadn't _been paying attention in class. I dodged behind a pawn, and the Unforgivable hit it, cracks appearing in the conjured stone.

"Points for Gryffindor for not trying to shield?" I asked, moving further behind the rook as the professor tried to circle and get a better vantage point to me. "I mean, if you're going to kill me, might as well have my house remember me fondly for winning them some points before I go." I wondered whether Mathilda had actually managed to get help from the assistant headmistress.

"He'sss ssstalling," complained the high-pitched voice from the back of Quirrell's head. "End thisss quickly."

"I'm trying, master," Quirrell argued with the voice. I couldn't see it clearly since I was trying to keep the professor from having a clear line of fire to me, but it seemed like a gray tumor on his head was doing the talking.

"You have wizard cancer there, professor?" I snarked. "Madam Pomfrey could probably treat that." I made a guess, "Unless you've been trying to treat it yourself with unicorn blood."

"How dare you call the Dark Lord a cancer!?" he insisted. "When he comes back into his power, I will be his favored servant. Not that fool Du Morne, nor any of the others. _Oppugno!_"

He hit the base of the rook with the object-attracting jinx and I was clipped by several stones hurtling at the chess piece before I leapt out of the way. Fortunately, I thought to shield as I leapt, because several fast curses came at me as I danced between pieces, moving behind the bishop as he shifted his own position on the board. It seemed, at least, like he couldn't manage an Unforgivable every volley. I wondered how energy-efficient those were, and how hard it would be to exhaust the professor who'd been sick for months with what I guessed was possession.

It finally clicked for me and I shouted over the sound of clattering stones, "At least Justin was smart enough to try to get someone else possessed. An _asshole_, but smarter than you."

"You think this was my first plan?" Quirrell railed, started to get annoyed with me. Good. Angry enemies were sloppy enemies. That's the entire reason I ran my mouth so much, and you can't prove otherwise. "_You_ were meant to be the vessel, Dresden. I would have had unlimited time to acquire the stone while we determined if Du Morne's ritual would even still require it. But you rejected the gift of the master's presence!" He caught sight of me and yelled, "_Crucio!_" again, missing as I ducked back behind the bishop."

I caught motion to my left as that side's rook walked off the board. Trying to cover for whatever the kids were doing, I kept running my mouth. "I don't know, man. Seems like both of you could have had a better time by just letting Dark Lord Wizard Cancer rot in whatever hole he was hiding in. Maybe stop blaming me because you're a dumbass?"

"_Reducto! Reducto! Reducto!_" the mocked professor shouted, blowing shards of giant chess piece into shrapnel around me. I hunkered down beneath a shield and only took a few of the hits. I was getting a little bruised and scratched, but was still feeling alright. Where the hell was my backup? A white pawn on the far side moved forward, its walking hidden by the sounds of smashing rock.

"Pawn to A5!" I heard Ron shout from the seemingly-empty corner square. The black pawn immediately in front of Quirrell stomped forward, forcing him to dodge out of the way, and I nearly landed a stunner on the hastily-shielding professor as the white side's queen started moving. "Knight to A6!" the invisible chess prodigy shouted, moving the pieces to inconvenience Quirrel as the entire side started to move so the knight, pieces blasted out of it, could walk over behind the pawn.

"Ignore the distractions!" the professor's passenger hissed. "The children must be in the other corner!"

A voice that was probably Hermione made a small, "Eep!"


	48. A Little Soul Magic

Trying to distract from the kids, I yelled after Quirrell, "This isn't the first time you've gone after those kids, is it? Why send the troll after Hermione? _Stupefy!_" I leaned around the bishop and fired a stunner.

"_Protego!_ I heard there was a mudblood crying alone in a bathroom. If she'd died, it would have given me much more time in here. _Reducto!_" The professor was ambling toward the left side of the board, keeping an eye on the white queen that had moved out in response to a black pawn Ron had tried to put in his way from the middle of the board.

"I lost that jumper in your class!" shrieked Hermione, still invisible in the corner. "_Incendio!_" Her shout was followed up by a pair of knockback jinxes from Ron and Neville.

"Dodge, fool! _Expelliarmus!_" hissed the cursed wizard living on the back of Quirrell's head. He must have seen the wands poke out of the cloak, and they went flying. Fortunately, the professor diving to avoid the barrage of spells meant he couldn't snag the foci from the air.

"_Accio Wands!_" I yelled, summoning the sticks to my hand from where I could see them flying above the chess board. While Quirrell was off balance, I moved left between pieces, trying to get a better view, and he smashed a few more pieces with object-shattering curses without getting close.

While he was focused on me, Ron took another moment for a chess move, "Bishop to A3!" The piece launched itself diagonally all the way across the board and through the square Quirrell had been stopped short at by the previous pawn.

"I tire of thisss," hissed Voldemort as the professor once again stumbled out of the way. "I ssshall end it!"

"No, master, you are not strong enough," Quirrell whined, still trying to keep me covered with his wand and an eye on the chess pieces.

"I have ssstrength enough… for thisss. _FINITE INCANTANTEM!_" With that shouted spell, a burst of magic emerged from the conjoined wizard and, as it washed over the chess pieces, they began to slowly collapse into rubble. Fortunately, my own enchanting seemed to be sturdier than the transfigured pieces, so my utility belt didn't disgorge its contents. I _was _about to be without cover.

"_Stupefy! Ventus!_" I shouted while swinging my staff end to end at the professor, who seemed briefly staggered by the magic expenditure.

Voldemort hissed, "_Protego!_" to catch the stunner, somehow forming a shield between me and the professor, but the wind spell still shoved Quirrell off balance. "End thisss, you fool. The children are helplessss and he lacksss protection!"

I realized he was right. The chess pieces had quickly melted into flowing sand. I had nothing of substance in between us, and no more stones to use as weapons or shields. Faster than I'd give him credit for from the knee he'd taken, Quirrell snapped off, "Yes master. _Imperio!_"

While I nearly dodged it, the Unforgivable was fired low and caught me in the leg. That's all it took. Suddenly my head felt wrapped in dark wool. Reasoning centers shutting down, all I could see was Quirrell, and all I could feel was a stifling numbness.

"Now, Dresden," spoke the only voice that meant anything to me. "Give me the philosopher's stone."

A new light appeared in the darkness, a trail of bright thought that reminded me that I'd placed it in one of my belt pouches. I glanced down, and could see my hand and the right slot in the belt. I slowly reached in, and could feel the rock in question in a bed of lead shot. Why was I so hesitant to produce it?

"Dresden! The stone!" insisted the professor, his full attention on me, no time for disarmed first-years even if they were invisible.

A stray thought passed almost unheeded through my mind about how much I hated the imperius. My godmother had been insistent that I know what it and the cruciatus was like. She probably would have tried the killing curse on me as well, if it was something you could build a resistance to. I thought she'd actually been quite pleased how well I did resisting it. I was too emotional to ever be good at occlumency, but I was certainly pig-headed enough to resist mind control.

"Can you not dominate a sssixteen-year-old?" yelled a voice on the edge of my consciousness.

It was still a near thing. I felt the wool tighten as Quirrell fought to control me. My hand dug into the pouch and it was all I could do to fight withdrawing the stone. And then, from somewhere a million miles away to my left I heard a girl's voice yell, "_Wingardium leviosa!_"

The utter surprise of the now-floating professor allowed me to tear through the rest of the spell. Thinking the kids disarmed, neither of the dark wizards sharing one body had noticed Hermione produce the quill focus I'd made her for Christmas and levitate him by his robes. As my faculties returned, I realized he'd easily counter the spell in a moment, but I couldn't resist the urge to shout, "Pull!" When my hand came out of the pouch, it was full of lead shot, not a magic stone. I tossed them in Quirrell's direction then baseball-swung my staff while shouting, "_Depulso!_"

No way to dodge while floating, Quirrell shrieked a hasty, "_Protego!_" but his shield was nowhere near as good against physical objects as mine was. While not as fast as the shotgun blast they resembled, the lead balls still smacked loudly into various parts of his body, drawing shrieks of pain.

"_Stupefy!_" I said, throwing one last stunner past the disintegrating shield. Quirrell slumped, unconscious, in the air, and then dropped slowly to the ground as Hermione released the spell.

"That was bloody brilliant!" exclaimed Ron, pulling the cloak off of the three kids, who looked unharmed. "Wait until my family hears I nearly ran You-Know-Who over with a chess set!"

"And Hermione picked him up by his underwear," smirked Neville. "I guess Harry helped a little, too," he deadpanned.

"Is it over?" Hermione asked, quill still held defensively as I walked over to give them their wands back.

"It'sss never over!" hissed Voldemort from Quirrell's head, apparently unaffected by the stunner. The body began to twitch, and what looked like smoke began to rip itself free from the slumped form. "I ssshall sssimply avail myself of another host."

In moments, the same wraith that had come after me nearly a year before hovered above the wreckage of Quirrell's body, looking us over as if deciding who to claim.

My caveman brain was screaming at me to kill it with fire. I knew fiendfyre had driven it off before. But the fire had claimed much more, and I couldn't risk the kids getting burned.

I barely realized that I'd moved to interpose myself between the trio of first-years and the hovering wraith. Was I reflexively sacrificing myself so they'd never know the touch of the creature? I wasn't sure I'd do that for just anyone: the very idea of being possessed by Voldemort terrified me. But _these_ kids were mine to protect.

I'd planned to just do my time at Hogwarts and not make any more connections, because I was afraid to trust and afraid of being betrayed. Somehow, I'd failed so utterly at doing so that I now had more friends than I'd had in my life. Months of time spent in classes with them all, but at the forefront of my mind was a simple heartfelt statement from a father that couldn't protect his own child. "...thanks for looking out for our daughter. You didn't have to, and nobody else was. It means the world to her. And us." I realized, though I may never be free of the traumas of my past, I could be… I _was_ happy. These kids were _mine _to protect.

"_Expecto patronum!_"

Anticipating, at best, a silver shield to defend us from the wraith that drifted ever closer, I was surprised when my mother's necklace lit like the sun and disgorged an immense silvery beast almost as large as me. The lion-like, massive dog crouched before us, facing the wraith and shaking with rage. Voldemort paused, hovering only ten feet away, then started to float forward again.

My patronus _barked_. He didn't make a sound, exactly, but he clearly made the gesture and a blast of silver light washed from his mouth and rolled over the wraith. Voldemort wailed and was carried away by the roiling blast beyond the walls of the chess room. Turning around with a doggy smirk at a job well done, the patronus dissolved back into a cloud of light that quickly faded.

_Then_, with the same timing as they had with the troll, the reinforcements finally showed up.


	49. Answers and Questions

It was extremely early Friday morning when Dumbledore came to check up on us in the hospital wing. Neville and Hermione were mostly there for observation and a few bumps and bruises they'd gotten in the obstacle course. Ron, of course, had a concussion from getting the wrong end of a giant magical chess piece. I had a number of scrapes and contusions, mostly owing to shrapnel from the same chess pieces. But Pomfrey thought we'd by out in plenty of time for the Quidditch match on Saturday.

Mathilda and Seamus had apparently been sent back to the tower before McGonagall showed up a few minutes too late to assist, and I fully expected to be inundated with questions as soon as visiting hours began. From the slump of his shoulders, Dumbledore looked like he'd had a trying evening of his own, and I heard him mutter something about the seventh month dying as he looked at the four of us in our hospital beds. Noticing me watching him, he tried to stand a little straighter and resume his grandfatherly persona.

The kids woke as they realized he was here, and I only half paid attention as he gave them congratulations for their role in Voldemort's defeat. When he mentioned the stone would be destroyed, because it was far too dangerous, I barely managed to contain my scoff. Dumbledore raised an eyebrow, and I nodded to the other side of the hospital wing, away from the kids.

"If you'll excuse me and Mr. Dresden," the old man told them, "You need your rest and we have a few more things to talk about." I got out of bed and followed him out of earshot of the precocious kids. "I trust you still have the stone, Mr. Dresden."

"I have _something_," I told him, then handed him the glassy, red stone Neville had thrown me. It fell into his palm with a few pieces of dull, gray lead shot from the pouch I'd put it in. "Guess I'm not going to be able to pay for my next year's supplies with a pouch of gold."

"And if I told you that the process of using the stone was more complicated than simply touching it to the metals in question?"

"I'd still expect that you were smart enough to use a convincing fake rather than have any risk of Voldemort getting the real thing," I told him. "Though, I guess you didn't think about what would happen if you had to leave the castle for more than an hour."

"Yes, well," he admitted, polishing his glasses in embarrassment, "I had not quite anticipated careful plans after the early attempt with the troll. Quirinus was able to slip a subtle confundus charm onto Minerva so she'd ignore the alarms I'd passed to her when I left, as well as any other evidence of risk to the stone. And I was called to the Ministry on another ruse. An employee there attacked me, but managed to escape. We think he was an undercover Death Eater trying to enact a backup plan, and I've spent hours engaged in that business.

"I really _am _grateful that you went to save the children, Harry. While, as you note, the stone was never in actual danger, he could have severely injured them if he discovered the ruse. Or simply out of spite."

"That could have been me, instead of Quirrell," I frowned.

Dumbledore nodded. "I don't know what ritual Du Morne was planning to use. It could have resulted in a much more complete possession. He may not have even needed the stone. Possessing poor Quirinus was likely a plan of desperation when he could not have you and did not acquire the stone from Gringotts that night."

I realized what he was trying to say, and noted, "Justin, Quirrell, the guy at the Ministry… he has a bunch of wizards trying to help him come back."

"I'm afraid so. The small bright spot, my boy, is that they all seem to be pursuing different plots to bring their master back. The Death Eaters were always fractious and hard to bend toward a single goal. Now that their master has once again been dispersed, hopefully they will be even less organized."

"Dispersed, but not gone. For some reason, he can keep coming back. And he's tried to possess me four times now." I frowned and rubbed at my left shoulder.

"Are you quite alright, Harry?"

"It's started itching again, since I came face to face with him," I admitted, peeling back the corner of my hospital robe to show the white finger marks on my shoulder from where the wraith of Voldemort had touched me nearly ten months earlier. They didn't look worse than they had all year. "Probably psychosomatic."

"I… hadn't realized he'd _marked_ you," the old wizard gave me an extremely strange look.

I shrugged, pulling the robe back closed. "Better me than the kids."

"Indeed," he cast a thoughtful glance in their direction, then switched back into his helpful grandfather tone. "Well, I hope you'll keep the secret about the stone. It can only help for him to believe that it was destroyed. The Flamels have agreed to lay low until this plays out, even should it take quite some time. They have plenty of it, after all."

"Hopefully it won't take that long. After OWLs, we need to catch you up on the anti-wraith spells. I think we've made some progress," I explained.

"I very much look forward to hearing about it. Oh! I've also seen to your housing situation for the summer. An alumnus of the school who I think you'll get along with has a spare room and could use the company. Minerva will provide you the details," he insisted as I was about to ask for those details. "For now, I must see that nothing else has gone awry in my absence."

Not long after I went back to my bed, visiting hours started and the Gryffindors (and one Ravenclaw) descended as a mass to check on the four of us. I let the kids tell the story, though it was clear that Seamus had already caught everyone up to his part and my entrance.

"I _would_ have been right behind you. McGonagall took forever to believe me! Then she insisted I take Seamus back to the tower," Mathilda apologized to me. "I think she only really started to listen when she realized you had already gone down there."

"She was confounded," I explained. "Wonder if you managed to get through to her, or it just broke during the fight. Either way, it's probably better," I tried to soothe her without being insulting. "He didn't take the kids seriously. If there were multiple people he thought were a threat, he might have worked harder to seriously injure or kill someone."

That seemed to mollify the over-excitable witch, and soon it was Percy, Penny, and Oliver apologizing that they hadn't been around. They'd apparently finally gotten back to the tower just as Mathilda was coming back with Seamus, and been stopped by Filch after the assistant headmistress had already passed on word it was over.

"So you formed a full patronus?" asked Percy, seeming impressed.

I demurred, since the two of them were still having trouble with the spell. "Barely. It's pretty much just a little mouse."


	50. OWLing Home

The final quidditch match between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw had worked out to be for the championship. It had something to do with point totals, and I retained what Oliver was telling me just long enough to point out that made the 150 point bonus for the snitch even more unfair. Then I promptly forgot everything about the calculation as a waste of my mental space for OWLs.

Gryffindor barely squeaked out a win in the match by somehow getting way ahead on goals, though Katie lost the snitch to Cho, the Scottish witch that we'd been studying with. But Ravenclaw was still far enough ahead on points for the year to win the quidditch cup. Both sides seemed grudgingly happy about it, which worked out for Percy and Penny (even though neither cared much about quidditch).

Our young seeker, Katie Bell, seemed pretty dejected at the party, since she'd missed the snitch every game she'd played, and Gryffindor had only done as well as we had due to the rest of the team. I tactfully did _not _point out to her that the seeker position was ridiculous, and the team _should _do better based on those actually playing.

With that excitement out of the way, the last two weeks of the year were devoted to OWLs. After the months of preparation, they were honestly kind of underwhelming. Even Percy and Penny seemed to calm down after the first few days of tests. We wouldn't get the results until later in the summer, but I felt pretty good about all the subjects I cared about. I even felt okay about history and astronomy due to all the study. A corporeal patronus did, indeed, seem to count for extra credit on the defense exam, and I was pleased I could still manifest mine outside of a life or death battle with a haunted wizard.

I wasn't entirely sure what everyone who wasn't taking OWLs or NEWTs did during the last few weeks of the semester, since they'd gotten their exams out early. I even had a week after OWLs to decompress, as the Ministry administered NEWTs. Though there was probably a more efficient way to schedule things, it _was _nice to have some time in the reasonably sunny weather outside with friends who were no longer obsessed with exams. It was nice to _have_ friends.

In a blink, the lazy first week of summer was over and it was time for the leaving feast. The hall was covered in blue and bronze, since the win at quidditch had boosted Ravenclaw far enough ahead of Gryffindor and Slytherin in points that they'd won the house cup. Before the feast started, Dumbledore stood up and explained the point totals, and looked like he was about to say something else as McGonagall hissed at him, "Albus, they've worked very hard for this. It would be _cruel _to steal it away." The other teachers probably heard, but I doubted the other students did.

"But Harry's–" he whispered to argue.

"–nearly an adult and doesn't need a show in front of the school for having done a good thing," she cut him off, glancing at me as if realizing I heard them.

Looking a little crestfallen, the headmaster nodded to his assistant and said to the great hall, "Congratulations, Ravenclaw. Everyone tuck in."

After that, it was just a train ride back to London. The arrangement was surprisingly similar to what it had been in September, though we'd taken on enough new friends to fill three carriage rooms. The first-years took up one of their own and Percy and Penny sat with me when they weren't on patrol (along with Oliver, his girlfriend Alexis when _she_ wasn't on patrol, and the twins). And the girls of the quidditch team plus Mathilda, Patricia, and Lee had grabbed a room of their own close enough to pop in frequently but deliberately separate in case Oliver tried to make them have a long conversation about the next year's quidditch strategy.

It was a strange sensation. The last time I'd been on the train I'd been anxious about whether it was a big mistake, relieved to have anyone to sit with and not take the long ride alone. After ten months, I was almost totally comfortable, and fully engaged in the camaraderie. I still didn't know what the summer would bring.

I had a mysterious landlord that I'd barely learned anything about from McGonagall. I still wasn't out from under the Doom of Damocles and Dawlish could show up to harass me at any moment. My godmother was up to _something_. The wraith of the most feared dark wizard in the last fifty years was on the loose and seemed particularly interested in me. And I still had no long-term plans.

But for one train ride, I was just a sixteen-year-old kid on a cross-country trip with my friends, and that was enough. The threatening future could wait just a few more hours.

End of Year 1

* * *

_And that's the end of year one. Thanks for everyone that followed along, and welcome to those that caught it once it was complete. Personally, I mostly read fics that are completed already, to avoid getting caught on a long delay or abandonment. I tend to enjoy the ones that are broken into different stories to provide clear stopping points, so I've opted to break this up by year. Check my profile for the sequels._

_There are two appendices that I'll post after this on the same schedule (which readers of my game design blog have already seen), and then a preview chapter for year two will go up when that begins posting. I'm deep into the writing of Year 2, so I don't envision any break in the schedule. See everyone in year 2!_


	51. Appendix 1: What is Magic?

This is the summary of how magic works as Justin taught it to me and I explained it to the kids who came to my enchanting tutorials. Hogwarts doesn't explain most of this unless you take arithmancy, and even then, some of the theory is lost in the practice.

Magic is, quite simply, imposing your wishes on reality. Those with access to the gift can want something impossible to happen badly enough that it happens. When a wizard is young, this "accidental magic" is the only way he knows to enact his gift. When a wizard is old and powerful, he can likewise, merely think magic into being. In the middle, wizards are taught complicated practices to organize this into spells that they'll eventually try to abandon. The difference between the untrained child and the ancient master is control over these wishes. Accidental magic doesn't do exactly what you expect to happen when you want it, but a master can create magic, when needed, every single time.

The first question you need to ask to understand how the process of magical training works is: why are most spells in Latin?

The reason is because it keeps the magic separated from your speech. If magic spells were in English (or whatever modern language you speak), you'd risk accidentally casting them in normal conversation. The pathways of your brain that control the instinct to create the magic get trained by the wording of the spell. Hogwarts professors probably don't work hard enough to get kids out of the habit of referring to spells by their incantation rather than their English name. One day, some kid is going to talk about the fire-making charm as "incendio" and accidentally set a friend of fire.

As I understand it, every culture with magic similarly uses a language that's not frequently used for conversation as their language of incantations. The Romans used ancient Greek, Aramaic, or Etruscan. Non-Western wizards use outdated forms of their own local languages. I'm still investigating Professor McGonagall's assertion that Hogwarts classes used to be taught in Latin while still using Latin incantations.

Of course, you can't just say the Latin word for something and consider that a spell. The use of a meaningful word in Latin is useful, but that's because even if you don't really speak it, it does have a meaning that you can latch onto. "Incendio" is a word that more or less means "I set on fire." You could probably make the magic work with a different series of sounds, but it would be harder to remember.

The most important thing is that "incendio" is four syllables, and arithmantically adds up to a 5-4-4-6 structure (_i_ is the 9th letter plus _n_ is the 14th, which adds up to 23 which combines down to 5). There's no way I could effectively summarize the exact practicals of how that number adding works or why 5-4-4-6 is a similar numerical array to related spells. You're either just going to have to take my word for it or commit to five years of arithmancy class. Essentially, _any _word that was close enough to a 5-4-4-6 cadence could be used as the incantation for the fire-making spell. Why are some incantations really bad Latin? Because the more correct Latin didn't fit the arithmancy.

There's a ton of math in figuring out an incantation, and that's just half of a spell. The other half comes in using your focus.

At the simplest level, the foci that I use for my magic (staff, blasting rod, etc.) are limited to particular types of spell. Spells that create or change motion are fundamentally similar in their arithmancy, so I was able to fit a bunch of them into my staff, and I have to differentiate between them by the different incantations. Also, turning the staff into different types of gestures improves the spell (but I can get a weaker version by just holding it and yelling). I've embedded a _spell matrix_ into the staff, which is a three-dimensional (some say a four-dimensional) shape that also defines its parameters. The arithmancy of the incantation hooks into the arithmancy of the matrix to basically create a momentary bubble of possibility for the wizard's thoughts to fill with the magic.

It's all extremely technical, which is why any Hogwarts student that skips arithmancy and ancient runes has pretty much no idea how it works. They're training engineers, not scientists. Most wizards never need to know how their tools work.

A wand is the most complicated piece of technology that wizards have come up with. If my staff is an abacus, a wand is a mainframe computer. Both can help you add numbers, but the computer can do so much more while being so much harder to understand. In a tiny, concealable form factor, wandmakers create a focus that can allow you to perform any spell, theoretically up to the maximum power possible.

The first drawback is the finesse issue. For whatever reason, I and a lot of other wizards have a really hard time using wands. It's some combination of conceptual and down to sheer manual dexterity (I have really long arms and that messes up the precise spell gestures). There are probably a ton of really great wizards who leave wand-focused schools thinking they're bad at it, because they just can't figure out the only technology those schools teach.

The second drawback is compatibility. While every focus has some degree of resonance with the aura of its user, wands are 100% locked into it. I picked the materials for my staff because they worked for me, but it's still extremely effective in any wizard's hands. A wand that's a poor match, however, may barely work at all.

It comes down to the secret technology of how they fit all those spell matrices into one focus. My suspicion is that the wand bonds to the wizard to basically turn his whole body into a completion of the matrix. A poorly-matched wand means all your matrices are malformed before you even start casting.

The third drawback is the gestures. Most of the matrix for a spell is in my staff so I can get away with just pointing. But a wand has to fit every possible spell in, which means it can only carry the most common arithmantic elements of all spells, and algorithms for transforming wand motion into the rest of the spell matrix. Why do you have to swish-and-flick to levitate something with a wand when I just have to gesture with my staff? That precise motion is finishing the matrix for the spell, which I've already fully encoded into my staff. Wand users have to get very good at training their muscle memory.

Ultimately, advanced users tend to start getting into magic without words or foci. Without the words, you have to create the spell in your head using no mnemonic aid triggering your brain. Without the focus, you have to fully visualize the matrix. Without either, you're basically relying on your imagination to fully generate an extremely complex mental construct with no aids other than your own brainpower. You quickly find that using words and tools to train your unconscious mind to do the heavy lifting makes a big difference.

And, when it comes down to it, all of this _is_ just training your brain. Arithmantic correspondences and spell matrixes aren't _real_. Non-Western traditions use completely different methods of structuring their magic. Western wizards use the structures they do because they've been codified and imbued with meaning, so it's something your brain can latch onto. I've heard some people suggest that part of it is also a "universal unconscious" thing: if enough people with the power to make their wishes reality think that the letter A is equal to 1, then that becomes true. I'll leave that up to the Department of Mysteries to weigh in on. All I know is that every bit of it is a mental construct.

You are a wizard. Your thoughts and desires can make impossible things happen. Every bit of magical praxis you've been taught is simply about making it easier to do what you want and harder to have accidents. It all comes down to: if you wish hard enough, you can change the world. Magic is just a set of tools to help you make the best wishes you can.


	52. Appendix 2: The Wizarding World

Imagine that soccer is the best-kept secret in the world. Some children display an inexplicable facility kicking balls, and then, by their 11th birthday, they're tracked down and informed by FIFA that they are soccer players. They can either train in the sport, or forget that it even exists. FIFA runs elite training schools for those truly serious about it, but it's also possible to go to smaller camps, or simply apprentice to an adult soccer player. When you become an adult yourself, you may do whatever you want with your life, but, when you're playing soccer, you're beholden to FIFA's rules. Rules made by administrators in the organization, who almost entirely came from the elite schools. Most soccer players have day jobs, and use their athletic prowess to give them a bit of a leg up in life. The truly professional players and administrators exist in their own high-stakes world.

Okay, sue me, it's a tortured metaphor because the world only has one thing that's like magic, and that's magic.

The best estimates I can find suggest there are 60 thousand magically talented folks in Britain, or around one for every 1,000 muggles. This isn't a hard rule or anything, just the current demographics. Before modern medicine, the ratio was probably significantly higher for wizards, who've long had the magical health care necessary to live well into their second century. It probably also helps to be able to use magic to get access to food and shelter and to avoid having to die in international wars. Though wizards often had violent, secret wars of their own.

Hogwarts takes 40 students a year. Fewer than one in ten British wizards attended the school. But if you look at Ministry bureaucrats, aurors, healers at St. Mungos, and the wealthiest individuals, it seems like everyone you meet has been there. And that's _after _you realize the muggleborns that make up a small but meaningful fraction of Hogwarts students aren't represented. What I'm saying is that the core of British wizarding society is an old-wizard's club far worse than even America's obsession with an ivy-league education. Virtually every position of power is held in the vice grip of a conspiracy of purebloods who went to Hogwarts.

What about the other fifty-something-thousand magical individuals in the country? If you work in a big enough muggle company, you probably have at least one in your office. Does it seem like Renaissance festival folks take it way too seriously? They're over-represented there. Carnies, artists, musicians, psychics, and other jobs where you can get away with being eccentric also feature far more magicals than one in a thousand.

Most of them aren't very well-trained. For the vast majority, the Ministry's satisfied if you can do enough basic spells to convince them you're not going to do accidental magic in an emotional moment, and that you understand the world of consequences they'll bring down on you if you break the Statute of Secrecy.

But keep in mind that well-trained is relative. Hogwarts teaches students to levitate things, start fires, make precise cuts and repairs, unlock doors, and transfigure inanimate objects in their first year. Even figuring out a handful of minor spells is a huge advantage in the muggle world. The honest go into crafting or service professions where they can do way more work than a muggle can (because muggle tools have to follow the laws of physics). The _dishonest _can easily become master criminals. And the Ministry doesn't pay too much attention to crime against muggles if it wasn't obviously caused by magic.

Ironically, the wizards that are struggling the most financially are often the purebloods raised so completely in the Hogwarts pipeline that they can't figure out how to make a go of it in the muggle world, but who are also near the bottom of the hierarchy when it comes to cushy Ministry jobs. I love the Weasleys to death, but they _baffle_ me.

The other irony of wizarding life is, the more powerful your magic, the harder it is to _truly _fit into the muggle world. Magic violates all the laws of science, and that also means that strongly magical objects, areas, and individuals cause problems with technology. Physics and chemistry develop inconsistencies in a strong magical field.

At Hogwarts and other sites of power, this field is so strong that even synthetic materials break down. Part of the reason they've stuck with quills is that plastic pens slowly melt into goo (though that's no excuse to not at least use fountain pens). The process is slow enough that the muggle kids outgrowing their tennis shoes and elastic underwear probably don't notice how much they start to sag, but don't bring your beloved polyester-blend t-shirts and expect them to be more than rags in a year or two.

I've also heard that, near the strongest fields, items that rely on precision machining start to have problems. Magic makes materials flex very slightly on a molecular level, and the more precise your machine, even if it doesn't use electricity, the more likely it is to have problems. For example, modern guns don't work consistently at Hogwarts, because the barrels and mechanisms are so precise that any flex at all can cause them to jam. Wizards, who still exist in a primarily hand-made materials economy, never even notice.

Electricity is a bigger problem. Changes to chemistry are slow, but changes to physics are fast. Casting a spell causes havoc in nearby sensitive electronics, and powerful enough wizards can interfere with delicate electronics simply by standing near them. Most of my pop culture knowledge of films comes from sitting safely in a theater where the projection equipment is far away, because I've killed every TV I've ever tried to watch for longer than an hour or two. That's another reason for magicals to go into non-office jobs, particularly as they become more reliant on technology: even a weak wizard will quickly kill any computer by sitting at a desk right in front of it for eight hours a day.

What you're left with is a three-layered society.

In the center is a strange core of pureblood-centric elites who almost entirely eschew muggle society for various reasons, not least of which is that their eccentricities and effect on technology make them inherently dangerous to the Statue of Secrecy. They "govern" the other layers insofar as they have a chokehold on power and are generally better educated in magic, so can win in a conflict even against superior numbers.

The next layer are strong but were either not trained to the same level or were, but were muggleborns who couldn't fit into the core society. They are smeared in a gradient between non-elite jobs in wizarding society and jobs in muggle society where one can avoid technology and get away with being unusual.

Finally, the weakest and worst-trained almost entirely live in the muggle world, indistinguishable from muggles with an obscure hobby or religion. With even a few magical talents, they tend to be successful beyond what their station in life would otherwise suggest, and mostly just ignore the magical government until they can't avoid it.

Honestly, when there's not a dark wizard throwing around spells that only the best-trained have any hope of protecting themselves against, the current standard of living in muggle society means that the people that purebloods most look down on probably have it way better than those with superior magic.


	53. Year 2 Preview

London has a lot going for it as a city, not least of which is cool old shops you can just get lost in. I had found a comfortable corner in the upstairs of Hatchards, a book store that nearly predated the United States. You just didn't get stuff like that back in Chicago. Of course, I wasn't the only one that appreciated the ambience. The place was probably packed with tourists _every _day of summer, but even more so because of the book signing going on.

The corner I'd chosen was partially out of defense from the crowd of chattering pre-teens and their parents that had mobbed the table where the wizard I was staying with for the summer was set up, wearing out his hand giving autographs to children. With my height, I could easily keep an eye on him and the stairs. I usually had at least a head of clearance in _any _crowd, but with a bunch of kids it was easy.

It also meant I was easy to pick _out _of the crowd, and I barely had a few seconds' warning of a rapidly approaching mass of curly brown hair before I was dive tackled. "Harry!"

I shared a grin with the more-slowly-approaching pair of dentists as I awkwardly returned the hug of their daughter, the magical world's smartest 12-year-old. "Hermione, it's only been a week!" I insisted, "But I'm glad to see you too."

"Harry," greeted Dr. Jean Granger with a handshake, as Hermione finally released me so Dr. Helen Granger could also give me a quick hug.

"Jean, Helen, glad you could make it," I told them.

"I don't think there was any way we wouldn't," Helen said, looking fondly at the small girl who looked so excited she was in danger of vibrating right through the floor.

"I just knew it!" she insisted, "I knew he must be–" with a glance at the muggles nearby, she had the common sense to lower her voice so it wouldn't carry past our small group, "–magical. Only, with the four houses at the school and some of the things that come _close_, but have clearly been changed to not violate the Statute of Secrecy, it had to be someone that was at least familiar with Hogwarts, and the way Professor Tabby is described it's _clearly _someone who knows Professor McGonagall, and–"

"Hermione, breathe," I interrupted her, a moment before her father looked like he was about to do the same. She'd gotten a lot better about the run-on-sentence exposition since starting school, but still did it when excited. "Why don't you go get in line for the book signing? Tell him you're the friend I mentioned when you get up there."

Jean handed the young witch three well-cared-for but clearly frequently-read hardback novels as well as the new one they'd just bought downstairs and she hurried over to get into the signing line. "She's been mad about those books since they started coming out when she was seven," Helen explained.

"Hermione, mad about books? I don't believe it," I joked.

Her parents grinned fondly, but Jean shrugged, "She wasn't usually as interested in fiction, but the _Magimals_ series somehow called to her. How'd you wind up staying with the author?"

"He's a former Hogwarts student, apparently owed the headmaster a favor," I answered. "I didn't even know he was famous until he mentioned the signing and asked if I wanted to come." While the series was apparently blowing up the children's literary market all over these days, it had only started coming out in Britain while I'd been just about out of the Chicago orphanage, and by the time it started to get popular everywhere I wasn't in the market for kids' magical fiction.

"From his author photos in the back cover, I've always thought he seemed sad, somehow," Helen mused, looking at the man signing his books, conversing with the children. "And those scars on his face…"

While he was wearing a long-sleeved turtleneck even in summer, he couldn't hide the scars that made it look like some kind of large wild animal had raked a claw from his eyebrows all the way down his cheeks. I admitted, "They're on his arms, too, probably other places. You know he's only in his early thirties?"

"No! I would have guessed forties at least," she said, a bit of pity entering her voice.

"I asked him about my mother, but he said he didn't go to Hogwarts until she had already left, so he'd have to be," I shrugged, "I haven't really gotten him to talk about it much, but McGonagall mentioned he lost a lot of friends in the war. Probably had a really hard life." After familiarizing myself with my temporary guardian's books and from what little I'd been able to pick up from him over the last week, I believed that writing a novel series was therapy, probably immortalizing his dead friends in prose. I wondered if they'd all been animagi, or if he just felt like they had the positive attributes of the animal forms he gave them in the novels.

Hermione rushed back up, reading off the dedication he'd made in her book, "He signed it, 'For Miss Hermione Granger, a lion if I've ever met one, RJ Lupin.' He was so nice!"

I nodded, because that had also been my experience. After Dumbledore and McGonagall had tried to keep me locked up in Hogwarts for nearly a year, I'd expected they'd pass me off to someone that would basically be a summertime jailor. But he'd started out insisting I call him Remus and had been similarly easygoing from there.

A camera flash drew my attention to where Remus was posing with two small boys with light, mouse-brown hair to either side of him, a man who was probably their father taking the picture. The man handed the camera back to the larger of the two boys as Remus finished signing their book and then, for some reason, pointed in my direction. "Incoming," I warned the Grangers as the trio headed in our direction.

"Excuse me," their father started, seemingly feeling a little out of place when he noticed the Grangers. I wasn't exactly a great judge of fashion or British class consciousness, but Hermione and her parents were all dressed in a way I'd at least classify as "preppy" while the man and his sons were much closer to my own ensemble of jeans and a t-shirt. "I'm Jack Creevey, and these are my sons Colin and Dennis. Mr. Lupin suggested that you also went to…" he glanced at the Grangers as if curious whether they were in on a secret, "...his alma mater?"

"Hogwarts?" asked Hermione's father. Off of Mr. Creevey's nod, Jean continued, "I expect you got an interesting letter when Colin turned 11? The same thing happened with Hermione last year…"

The Grangers moved to the side to commiserate with Mr. Creevey over the plight of surprised parents of muggleborn students, leaving me and Hermione with the two tiny boys, each bouncing up and down with a million questions. Smirking at the girl, I said, "Hey, Hermione, why don't you tell the Creevey brothers about Hogwarts?" She looked like she wanted to protest, but realized she had a lot of excitable muggleborn karma to pay back, and nodded.

With the signing line finally clearing out, I left the Grangers educating the Creeveys and made my way over to Remus' table. I sidled up and quietly asked him, "They were also big fans and suddenly made the connection that you're a wizard?"

"Minerva apparently told them during her home visit, when she saw that they had my books," he answered. "I'll have to ask her to give me more warning in the future. Those boys are loud. Sorry to pawn them off on you."

"No worries," I grinned, "I passed them right on to the Grangers."

"Probably for the best. I don't know why Minerva doesn't deliberately put the new muggleborn parents in contact with others who've already gone through it." He started gathering up his pens when he noticed the shop staff was beginning to pack up the table. "Well, that was exhausting. Remind me to stand firm on not doing a world tour the next time my agent suggests it."

"At least you wouldn't have to spend a ton of time in transit," I suggested.

"Unfortunately, I would. She's a muggle, so I can't exactly suggest that she doesn't need to book hours and hours of plane travel because I'll just apparate every–" he broke off suddenly, nostrils flaring as his body tensed up. I turned to follow his look as a hugely muscled man in an overly-tight cheap suit ascended up the stairs. He had thinning gray hair loosely slicked back and his own array of scars on a face that didn't look fully human.

Tossing a copy of Lupin's latest book onto the empty table, he grinned through a set of teeth that had been filed to points and said, "Make it out to, 'My old friend, Fenrir Greyback.'"

* * *

_Please check out Born in Fiendfyre, Year 2: Dark Room, available now by checking my profile._


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